Merlin

* Anime
* Novel
* Manga

**Merlin** (マーリン, *Mārin*?) is a character introduced in *Toaru Majutsu no Index*. Known as the **Magus of Flowers** (花の魔術師, *Hana no Majutsu-shi*?), he is a legendary figure best known as a sorcerer and prophet featured in Arthurian legends. He is renowned as one of the greatest magicians of all time. He was also once the court magus of King Arthur and one of his closest advisers until the closing years of his reign.

## Etymology

The name Merlin is derived from the Brythonic term *Myrddin*, a bard who was one of Merlin's chief sources.

## Appearance

Due to his status as a shapeshifter, Merlin's true form is currently unknown, though he commonly takes the form of a young man who has a huge mane of flowing white hair and violet-colored eyes. His hair is stated to appear with the colors of the rainbow under sunlight. He wears a white robe that has a hood and cape like covering over his shoulders with a lilac triangle trim. His outfit has multiple layers with colors of pink, purple, royal blue, and light blue as well as rope work including a golden knot on the front. He also wears loose, billowy black pants with a golden design on them that extends past the knee. Merlin also has a pair of fluffy pink earrings that seems to faintly resemble the gills of an axolotl.

## Personality

On the surface, Merlin is a very eccentric, jovial, laidback, and childish individual who rarely ever takes anything seriously and is shown to possess a cheery and witty, though occasionally snarky, sense of humor. He usually displays a happy-go-lucky and flamboyant personality, which can comes across as rather irritating to those around him. However, despite his laziness, he also proves to be very diligent when there is a task needed to be taken care of. Still, due to being quite lacking in terms of seriousness combined with a lack of responsibility, one could also see Merlin as a shifty con man whose true intentions are never revealed unless he reveals them.

Merlin is extremely confident in his abilities and status as a powerful sorcerer, believing himself to be practically invincible. He usually claims that he inflicts jealousy and envy on all other magicians, since they are considered as second-rate to him. Moreover, Merlin is also shown to be blunt with his words and doesn’t seem to hold back when he has something to say, whether it be truthful or just rude. This trait often seems gets him in trouble and is heavily implied to be at least partially the reason why nearly everyone he interacts with seems to dislike him.

Despite being a cambion, Merlin doesn't really hold any hatred toward mankind. Instead, he is incredibly fond of humanity to such a degree that it is beyond natural, wanting to protect it at all cost. Merlin is also a prankster who loves causing mischef and likes playing jokes on others. As a half-incubus, Merlin has a perverted nature which causes him to look for lovers and frequently tease women. Othinus once wondered why Merlin is quite popular with females and called him a menace to women, a sentiment that he does not mind in the slightest.

Additionally, in spite of his immature and carefree behavior, Merlin harbors a more shrewd and cunning side to himself. Beneath his exterior, Merlin is shown to be extremely intelligent and calculating, constantly analyzing, planning, and weighing the pros and cons of his actions, taking the smart move in the long term over more rash and emotional decisions. He is proficient at coming up with long-run strategies, though he doesn't inform his allies what they are until the time is right. He is also willing to use dirty means to achieve his goals. Because all of his actions are done for humanity's happy end with little care for who is used or manipulated in the process, his decisions are considered to be neither good or evil and with zero emotion whatsoever towards the people themselves. It goes to the point where Merlin considers himself as the one sinless person in the entire world.

Furthermore, though he loves humanity on an abstract level, Merlin is incapable of truly understanding and empathizing with people as individuals. This is due to his cambion blood, immortality and foresight giving him an abnormal perspective that can't be called "human". As Merlin explains to Touma, incubi like himself do not possess emotions of their own, therefore they feed off human dreams to harvest "subtleties of the heart" from them and expend those harvested emotions as fuel to feel emotions themselves. Because of this, he is only capable of seeing people as a source of sustenance or amusement. So while he wants to protect and foster humanity, his reasons are entirely selfish and has little to no qualms screwing over people in pursuit of them.

Nevertheless, Merlin is a wise and knowledgeable person who has wide experience on both magic and social dynamics. Despite his incomprehension of human emotions, he can be considerate towards acquaintances and has even managed to build genuine friendships with certain individuals, such as Kamijou Touma, who he states has helped him to become a little more human. In addition to this, for all of humanity's follies and flaws, Merlin continues to be nothing but supportive of the human race even if only for his own entertainment. Even if he knows the human race is a tapestry that will eventually end, he wants to make sure it's a beautiful tapestry. He believes humanity will leave behind a beautiful history worth remembering and will always protect them.

## Background

The exact origins of Merlin are shrouded in mystery as his past is filled with contradiction, intentional misdirection, and manipulations. However, it is known that he was concieved from the union between a queen of Wales and a supernatural incubus that lived between the earth and the moon.

It has been said that Merlin had performed many prophecies at a young age. Among the many prophecies that caused Merlin's name to become widely known, there was one in which, after correctly guessing about the existence of two dragons, one red and one white, sleeping beneath Mount Emrys, he spoke of how, at the time of having that vision, those red and white dragons would fight against each other upon waking up. Merlin's words, which were transmitted in posterity as prophecies, indicated the red dragon as Britain and the white dragon as the Saxons, and under a great king would Britain finally gather their forces and surely reign over both Gaul and Rome. He also left behind many other prophecies, and amongst them were those concerning wars and even the king's death.

Foreseeing that this king would come from Vortigem's successor, King Uther Pendragon, Merlin sought to manipulate events so that his omen would come to pass. During his reign King Uther clashed with Gorlois the Duke of Tintagel. During these conflicts Uther became attracted to Gorlois' wife Igraine. Merlin played on Uther's carnal desires by using his magics to make Uther appear to be Gorlois to facilitate a coupling between Uther and Igraine, in exchange for ownership of Uther's firstborn son. As fate would have it, Gorlois was slain in battle and Uther wed Igraine, who begat the king a son: Arthur. Arthur was given to Merlin, who left the boy in the care of the knight Sir Ector with Merlin acting as tutor for the boy in the years to come, he later instructed Uther to construct the Round Table that would become part of the legend of the future King Arthur. Also during this period, Merlin befriended Arthur's distant relative, the Baron of Scandia, and remained a friend of the family, another part of his plans that would see fruition in the future.

## Chronology

### Toaru Majutsu no Index

#### Academy City Invasion Arc

*Main article: Academy City Invasion Arc*

## Abilities

As the Great Hierophant who is regarded as a virtuoso of magic, Merlin is a tremendously powerful and gifted magician who possesses virtually absolute mastery and knowledge of the mystic arts and is said to be the most feared magus in the country of Britain, albeit rivaled by Morgan le Fay. He has displayed many immense magical powers, possibly related to his immortality, and has also trained himself so that he has developed other powers as well. With the help of numerous mystical artifacts and relics, in addition to his astral powers, Merlin is able to gain access to a multitude of mystical capabilities. He is able to materialize objects, control the four elements, levitate, thought-cast, hypnotize, astral project, and manipulate energy in various ways such as mystic bolts.

Merlin's powers are from obscure sources: he, unlike his disciple Morgan, does not evoke Gaea, as he turned away from the Celtic faith, nor did he appear to summon the power of mystical entities; even the many spiritual items and artifacts he's utilized do not appear to be a primary source of his magic. Instead, he relies upon his innate mystical talents and resources as well as manipulating the ambient mystical energy of the universe.

As a half-incubus, Merlin is able to enter and alter the dreams of other intelligent creatures, allowing him to control them. He also possesses highly developed shapeshifting capabilities, allowing him to adopt almost any form imaginable whether it be animals, other humanoid beings, or even inanimate objects. The thought has been raised that his current form is merely just a shape Merlin has decided to remain in. True to his nickname, Merlin can cause flowers to bloom and turn the ground he walks on into a flowerfield. He is also very skilled in the creation of illusions, allowing him to easily project daydreams or nightmares in the realm of the psyche, or easily cover an area the size of an entire village in illusions that is able to fool practically anyone. He is also capable of transmuting reality itself to create illusions so powerful that they outweigh reality. Moreover, he can cast spells for healing, telekinesis, magical lightning, teleportation, summoning, transmutation, obliteration charms that are able to destroy entire islands, and forcefields that can resist an asteroid or a supernova.

Furthermore, Merlin can use a spell called **Altemillion** (アルテミリオン, *Arutemirion*?), which allows him to change the weather with the usage of mana. To be more specific, Merlin can alter the state of the weather within a large radius, manipulating the temperature, moisture, and various other factors. He can modify the temperature of the environment, control forms of precipitation, humidity and moisture on a molecular level, create lightning and other electromagnetic atmospheric phenomena, and has also demonstrated excellent control over atmospheric pressure. He can incite all forms of meteorological tempests, such as tornadoes, thunderstorms, blizzards, hurricanes, or mist. He also can dissipate such weather to form clear skies.

Merlin has been shown to be able to tear shooting stars from the sky and hurl them at Morgan, maintaining such a fierce battle for six days. He also bears the natural gift of foresight, and even as a child was able to see and know much of that which has yet to come, making him a seer, peering far into the fates of all but himself, his greatest curse, yet also perhaps his greatest gift. This, combined with his high-level sensory abilities that sees through the world, allowing him to view everything in the present era down to the tiniest detail, makes Merlin virtually aware of much of what transpires and shall transpire in the modern world or the universe.

### Endless Magic

Merlin's primary magic is known as **Endless Magic** (無限魔術, *Mugen Majutsu*?), which foundations lie upon the concept of infinity, be it as an endless repetition or an infinite expansion, hence allowing him to revert anything back to its original state by making them remember the form which they used to hold, repairing broken objects and resurrecting people from the dead, as well as allowing Merlin to recover from any fatal injuries by rewinding his body back to its original state, and to create infinity out of any number so long as it is not 0, modifying finite quantities so that they expand perpetually. Merlin uses this magic to keep his spells active indefinitely until he himself chooses to end them. This can be used in a variety of ways to make his spells neverending, including freezing others in ice eternally, causing flames to burn without end, or even his own time. Additionally, Merlin is also able to apply infinity into a spell to continuously channel magical power to it and drastically increase its power, making exponentially more powerful to even overcome magical spells at the level of the Magic Gods.

However, the true basis and source of Endless Magic is derived from the concept of Schrödinger's Cat, that is, an unobserved entity of infinite variation whose uncertain existence makes it so all possible interpretations of them are equally valid and impossible to be denied, causing it to become the root of infinite possibilities and scenarios. Thus, the Magus of Flowers is akin to a storyteller who essentially weaves infinite tales, shaping his own worlds and controlling the infinitely-expanding possibilities contained within his own personal catbox.

### Other abilities

**Genius-Level Intellect**: As one of the world's most accomplished magicians, Merlin possesses vast knowledge of magic and the supernatural. He is extensively self-taught in mystical lore and is an expert on various magical theories. Moreover, in addition to possessing an exceptionally high amount of knowledge about magic, Merlin is very knowledgeable in various other fields such as science, mathematics, philosophy and the world as a whole.