amphigoury

Title: Art for "The Dragon Mosaic"

Characters: Merlin, Arthur, Kilgharrah, Aithusa

Art Rating: G

Art Warnings: No Required Warnings

Story Summary: When Arthur Pendragon took up his post as the youngest ever Director of a National Museum, all he wanted was to do the best job he could. He didn’t expect to end up embroiled in art theft… or to fall in love.

Story link: Read the Story on AO3!!

Artist's notes: Oh

scotscookie **GLOMP** Thank you so much for letting me do the art for this fic! I know at first I was like, "I'm just gonna do the mosaic cuz I've got a ton of shit to do", but once you wrote that climactic scene I just HAD TO DRAW THAT!! Big thanks and squishy hugs to

the_muppet for the amazing mod work she puts in every year for this community - you are AMAZEBALLS! And a very super special big glompy thanks to my trusty betas

altocello and

reni_m You guys are my heroes!! Thank you also to the #paperlegends chat gang for the cheers and motivation!

Disclaimer: I don't own Merlin; BBC and Shine do. No copyright infringement intended, no profits were made. I DO own the art though, and request that you do NOT repost it anywhere without my permission. Rebloggable on my Tumblr and deviantART.

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Strange Composition

The earth was gradually giving up her secrets. The painstaking work over the past couple of weeks was bearing fruit as tiny tile after tiny tile was revealed. They kept waiting for the moment when they would come across an area of damage, or where the mosaic had been lost altogether, but so far it was complete and looked almost as if it had been laid yesterday. If they didn’t have the dating evidence from the layers above, Merlin wasn’t sure he would have believed it was a Roman period mosaic.

The sinuous outlines were picked out in darker brown, with more brown tiles of varying shades providing the bulk of the colour within. Already he could see it wasn’t a sea serpent as he had originally postulated, but it wasn’t yet clear what type of creature it was. The composition was strange, too and he joined the others as they stared down at it.

The mosaic was an oval set within a square that made up the floor of the room and Merlin frowned.

“It’s not right, is it?”

Morgause looked at him as If he was an idiot. “It seems to be asymmetrical.”

“It’s beautiful, though.”

Click through for larger size

Art Notes: I wracked my brain trying to figure out how to put a single dragon into a circle mosaic, off-centered, but still make it look to the average person that "maybe it's supposed to be that way?". So I balanced the dragon with the sun, as Aithusa represented the light and all that in canon. Fun fact: Behind Kilgharrah is a moon. So when he leaves, the "empty" mosaic is the two skies with a sun and moon and the seal.

We Need Emrys

Arthur spared the briefest of moments to lament the loss of Merlin’s touch, especially as there was every chance these were their last moments. He heard Morgana and Morgause begin to chant, and only opened his eyes when Merlin cried out in fear and denial.

They, with Uther and all the crates, were covered by a shimmering golden dome. The sight of Morgana and Morgause with glowing golden eyes was unnerving enough, but Merlin eclipsed them, power rushing from him to feed the dome protecting them. He looked terrified and Arthur ached to touch him, but Morgana squeezed his hand hard in warning, stopping him from breaking the circle. He was vaguely aware of the chaos outside their shield as the building exploded around them, but he could hear nothing of it, and could only watch as concrete, wood and metal shot past them and rained down upon them.

Art Notes: This one was totally last minute. My posting date was Friday, and I drew this on the Wednesday and coloured on the Thursday with on-the-fly beta'ing LOL! But I was SO inspired by the scene. If I had a bit more time, I would've drawn a wide angle shot showing the four in the circle and the dome, but given my time limit, this is what came out.

The Dragon Mosaic

“What is it?” Arthur asked as he joined Merlin by the side of the trench. Merlin was staring down and didn’t even seem to hear him and when Arthur followed his gaze, he understood why.

Where there had been one dragon, now there were two, and each held an egg.

“What? How?” Arthur ran out of words and instead he stood there and gaped.

Click through for larger size

Art Notes: Lots of "two sides of the same coin" references in the mosaic - and if anyone is well-versed in the Dragon-tongue of Skyrim, there is a message in the stone ring for you, lol!

That's it! Tune in on September 12th for my final PaperLegends art post. *cries a bit at the finality of it all*

Please remember to not repost any of my art without my permission. Rebloggable on my Tumblr and deviantART.