Chapter Text
“I just think that it would be a really good learning experience for him.”
“My liege, the last time Sir Gawain attempted to make tea for the round table, he set the kettle on fire.”
“Huh? The whole kettle?”
“The whole kettle.” Lancelot confirmed.
The king chuckled as the two hedgehogs walked along the dirt trail resting outside the castle. The morning chill had started to dissipate under the bright sun. It felt nice and refreshing. Arthur’s mornings were almost always busy so it was nice to finally get to be out and appreciate it. Especially with the company of his favorite knight. He knew he shouldn’t have favorites, but there was something about Lancelot that always made his heart flutter and it was nearly impossible not to smile in his presence.
He sighed contently, “Perhaps Gawain could use a bit of supervision but I believe he’s up to the task and besides, if things still go south we could–”
Arthur suddenly fell silent and stopped in his tracks, his attention directed towards the castle wall, beside the small trail the two were goofing off walking on.
“What is the matter, sire?” Lancelot asked, concern laced in his voice.
Arthur pointed, “Isn’t that Merlina’s?” He gestured toward what was very obviously Merlina’s magic staff leaning against the wall.
Lancelot instantly walked over to the staff to inspect it. “I believe you’re right,” he responded and gently picked up the woven wand. It was much heavier than it looked, unnaturally heavier. The knight continued, “I wonder what it’s doing all the way out here.”
The king shrugged and made a weak ‘I don’t know’ sound in response.
“No matter. We shall return it to her,” Lancelot affirmed and the two made their way back inside the castle, staff in hand.
When they arrived, Lancelot knocked confidently on the sorcerer's study door.
Silence.
He tried again.
More silence.
“She doesn’t seem to be here.” the knight said, stating the obvious.
“Let’s just put it inside then. It’s only her study, and I mean, it’s better than just leaving it out here, right?” Arthur said.
Lancelot hummed, “I suppose that is true.”
He reached for the handle but before he could make contact the door slowly creaked open and a cold chill blew through the doorway. And suddenly he was having second thoughts, maybe they could just hold on to it for now, it could make a great paper weight.
“That was creepy,” Arthur giggled, “Are we sure she’s not practicing any dark magic?”
“I doubt that,” Lancelot said, feeling a little less on edge now. He hesitantly stepped inside the study and felt his new sense of resolve immediately dissipate as an eerie darkness hung around the room and surrounded the two hedgehogs. His king has been joking of course, but it really was strange for a light sorcerer to have such a dark room.
In the dimly lit light he could see the room’s walls were deep purple and were mostly covered by shelves that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. Across the cobblestone floor layed a large dark green rug with the pattern of a sundial on it, it was old and worn, the knight remembers it being there when he first came to this castle all those years ago. Her desk sat near the far wall and was covered in scrolls and vials. The shelves there were much fuller than the ones in the rest of the room, every inch of space was covered with some sort of book or potion or jar, he couldn’t even begin to guess what kind of magic any of them held.
Perhaps that was a good thing. Magic could be very dangerous and he’s encountered more than his fair share in his youth. The amount of spells the faeries secretly taught him that he definitely should not have known was more than enough. Nimue always had her hands full, if Lancelot wasn’t such a careful kid things would have gone very badly very quickly. Well, badly for them, not the faeries though. Those pieces of shit knew exactly what they were doing.
Despite them though, the young hedgehog survived and learned not to mess around with magic that you don’t understand. Which was why he was so surprised when Arthur opened his mouth again.
“Wait!” Arthur called out, stopping Lancelot from placing the staff upon the desk.
“What is it, my liege?”
“I was just thinking… Before we give it back, maybe we could practice a few spells? I’m sure Merlina wouldn’t mind and it could be lots of fun! What do you say?”
“Pardon me sire, but I do not think magic is something to be trifled with without proper experience.”
“Don’t you have experience? Come on Lance, pleeeeeaaaasssssse.” The king begged his knight and batted the biggest and saddest puppy-dog eyes that he could muster, “Just for a few minutes?”
Lancelot felt troubled. This really wasn’t a good idea. But… if it was only a few minutes…
He growled to himself lightly, “Alright, as you wish. But only for a few minutes.”
Arthur practically leaped in the air in joy and excitedly placed himself at Lancelot’s side. The knight couldn’t stop the small smile that slipped on his face from seeing how excited his king was.
“Magic can be very tricky to get a handle on. It’s chaotic and untamed. If you fail to control it it will control you.” Lancelot warned as Arthur nodded, trying to act serious.
“And you mustn’t be afraid of it, fear leads to uncertainty which leads to lack of control. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“I’ll show you a very simple spell,” he continued, “We’re going to create a small light.”
“That’s it?”
“As I mentioned before, sire, magic is dangerous. So yes, that is it.”
Arthur sighed, “I guess that’s fair. Can we make it into cool colors? Or what if! We make it change colors!”
“How about we just start with one color for now.” That seemed to be enough for the blue hedgehog as he gave a simple smile in return, so Lancelot continued, “Merlina’s staff in particular is actually made of light magic, so we don’t need any incantations for this one. All you need to do is focus and channel your energy into the spell and the staff will use that energy to create the light.”
Lancelot held the staff out to his side with two hands so that Arthur could grab a hold of it as well.
“I’ll let you lead and grant support if you need it. Alright, are you ready?”
“Ready!”
-
Lancelot wasn’t sure how it happened but when he opened his eyes he was laying on the floor. He felt disoriented and his vision was swimming. He squinted his eyes as he tried to remember what he was doing.
The spell, that’s right! he thought, something must have gone wron g.
He grumbled at the realization. This was exactly why you don’t play around with magic. Of course, the spell went wrong. It wasn’t even their staff to begin with. He should have known better. Actually, he did know better so there was truly no excuse for his actions.
The knight sat there soaking in his own frustration till his vision finally cleared. He looked down in front of him and saw a golden object haphazardly laying on the floor.
Strange. It was the king’s crown…
The king’s crown! Reality practically slapped the knight in the face and he urgently picked up the royal headpiece as gently as he could. Thankfully, it appeared undamaged and was fully intact. He quickly turned towards his king.
“My liege! You dropped your–”
But Lancelot wasn’t able to finish his sentence because there, lying in front of him, was not his majesty the king, it was… himself. He nearly dropped the crown in shock. He blinked several times, trying to process what he was seeing and hoped it would change if he blinked hard enough. It did not grant him such wishes.
Lancelot hesitantly looked down towards his own arms, still holding the royal crown in his hands. His black fur was now replaced with the beautiful azure fur of his king. He wasn’t wearing any of his armor and hanging from his neck rested the royal mantle.
Surely he was dreaming right?
His attention was stolen from a sudden stirring to his side as he–or what looked like him anyway- began to get up, looking visibly disoriented.
“Hey Lance, are you alright?” the other sat up, holding his head and turned towards the other hedgehog, “I may have missed a st—”
The king was cut off by the sight of a very concerned and wide-eyed version of himself staring back at him. The hedgehog blinked down towards his own self and found that he was covered in armor, Lancelot’s armor to be specific, his arms were covered in dark fur and each had a familiar red stripe running down it.
“Ummm, Lance?” Arthur asked, looking towards the mirror reflection of himself, who lightly nodded back, still mostly frozen in shock. “I think we might have done something wrong.”
“Oh gods,” the knight finally spoke again, trying to reassure himself, “This can’t be happening. This must be a dream and when I wake up everything will be normal.”
“Yeah, I’m not so sure about that. Unless I’m dreaming too, I think this is real. Have I always looked weird in that cape?”
“What? No, no of course not it’s…” Lancelot quickly shook his head, “My liege, pardon me but I do not think that is the proper reaction to the situation.”
“And I think you need to look on the brighter side, Lance. Worse things could have happened. At least we didn’t perish! We simply just switched bodies… I think. And if I’m honest, I think this could actually be a lot of fun.”
“Oh Chaos.”
“Imagine the possibilities!”
“Why did I agree to this?”
“I can finally see what life is like for the good knight Sir Lancelot.”
“I knew this would end badly and still I proceeded.”
“Do you really wear this heavy armor everywhere? Sheesh.”
“How dare I disgrace my king in such a way.”
“Does this mean I have your cool super strength?”
“A knight, in royal blood…”
“You think I could lift a bear off the ground?”
“A dishonor to the kingdom…”
“I bet I could lift a bear off the ground.”
Silence passed between the two for several moments as Lancelot nervously fidgeted with his new quills. Arthur copied the action, giggling to himself.
“Well!” Arthur sprung up from his feet, “We can’t fix it just sitting around here.” He turned on his heels and walked straight for the fallen staff. Lancelot jumped to his feet too.
“My liege, what are you doing!?”
“This is the thing that changed us right, so let’s just undo it.”
“No! I- Pardon,” he cleared his throat, “We are not fooling with any more unknown magic. We will be waiting here till Merlina returns and she can fix this.” the knight said sternly.
As if on cue, the door opened, startling the two hedgehogs when the wizard stepped inside. She flinched and anxiously blinked at the uninvited visitors. She looked oddly between the nervous duo before she spotted her staff, the same one that she had been looking for all morning, lying on the floor.
They quickly spoke in unison, “It was an accident!”
“What?” the sorcerer asked. She watched as who she believed to be the king carefully approached her.
“I deeply apologize, we should not have been fooling with your things in the first place and we understand it was very disrespectful.” he said.
Then the hedgehog that she thought was Sir Lancelot rushed over to join the other, he spoke incredibly quickly, “Don’t blame him! It was my fault! Entirely! We didn’t mean any harm, I just really wanted to see magic for myself. Honest!”
Merlina looked back and forth between the two. Something wasn’t right…
“You two are acting very strange.”
The “king” grew a very panicked expression on his face and the “knight” looked away sheepishly. How peculiar… she thought. They never behave like this. It was almost like they were trying to act like each other.
“What happened?” she asked.
The two hedgehogs gave each other a glance before “Arthur” spoke, “We used your staff without permission so I could show his majesty how to perform a simple light spell.”
“We uh…. Kind of messed it up though. Badly.” finished “Lancelot”.
Merlina couldn’t find it in herself to be angry at the moment as the whole exchange kept continuing to confuse her the longer it went on.
“You appear to be confused, Lady Merlina.” said the king’s voice.
“I am. For some reason you both seem to be behaving like the other. Almost as if you swapped bodies,” she gave a short laugh, “Apologies, I understand how ridiculous that sounds.”
She expected them to laugh along, or at least she thought her king would but they both remained silent and shuffled in place awkwardly, a small embarrassed glimpse upon each of their faces.
“Oh dear Gaia below, you didn’t…”
“We um………we did.” Arthur said.
Merlina’s face fell into her hand. This was a mess. But she quickly decided that she would need to bury her frustration if she was going to fix this. She sighed deeply.
“Can you fix it?” Arthur asked.
“Yes… but since I don’t know what spell you actually cast, it’ll take some time to research how to fix it.”
“Which means?”
“You too are going to have to assume each other’s roles until I can create a reverse spell.”
“And how long may that take?” Lancelot asked worryingly.
She hummed, “Probably until the end of the day.”
Arthur grew an excited smile on his face and Lancelot gulped worryingly.
This was going to be an eventful day.