#and naturally theres gonna be an angsty climactic scene in which merlins name is spoke and he turns into a horrible body horror monstrosity

[fishoutofcamelot]

Arthur: have you seen any ghosts around here yet?

Merlin, literally floating a full foot off the ground and half-translucent: nope, no sir-ee, no ghosts here

Behold, mediocre art for my paranormal au! Which is really just a ghost au but with a neat lil spirit-based magic system thrown into the mix (do not ask me to explain the magic system, bc I'm very excited and I will rant about it for a million years) Pictured on the left is Merlin, and on the right is Arthur

The current working title is "Pennies On the Eyes", and its basic synopsis is that Merlin is a ghost who inadvertently gets roped into teaching a bunch of humans how to defend themselves against spirits of the dead, and they all get up to some shonen-esque ghostly shenanigans. Arthur starts out as a minor antagonist, what with him being an exorcist and all, but don't worry I plan to give him the character arc canon never could as he questions his biases and becomes a genuine ally. It also somehow turned out a lot more Gwen-centric than I was anticipating, but honestly who in their right mind would complain about that?

Anyway I love the dynamic between Merlin and Arthur in this fic, with Arthur being this hard-edged exorcist in training who's determined to rid Camelot City of its 'ghostly infestation', while completely oblivious to the fact that his quirky new friend is very obviously a ghost himself. Like at this point pretty much every other character *except* Arthur has figured it out, so they're all just kinda standing there like "...should we tell him?"

(Also I just gotta say the part of this fic I'm most excited about is the *mystery*. Namely, the mystery surrounding Merlin's death. Because in this story the main thing about ghosts is that the more powerful the ghost is, the more painful their death was. And uhhh Merlin is arguably the most powerful ghost in the entire fic, so it's, uh... probably a good thing he has post-mortem amnesia)

Like realistically I'm probably never gonna write this thing, but I'm still absolutely in love with the story and I wanted to share it with y'all anyway! <3