I've come across some sad sights in my time.

You don't regularly find your drunk self on the mean streets of Birmingham in the early hours of Sunday morning without developing a high tolerance for the terrifying, the broken and the outright bizarre.

In my early twenties, for example, I once rescued a hedgehog from a hotdog bun a homeless guy was toasting over a campfire.

I seen me some shit.

Even so, and even with all those dissolute years of battle-hardened, gin-soaked grimness behind me, I'm going to struggle to forget the image of the blackened corpse of the Forest Guardian.

I wasn't sure why I was so affected by the sight. It could have been my developing sensitivity to Wood Qi. Maybe it was the unholy smell of napalm that lingered around the body. It might even have been the troubling way the little body looked to have suffered greatly in its last - fiery - moments.

Basically, what I'm saying is, as far as I was concerned, we'd murdered Groot, and I was going to be losing sleep over it. And I didn't think there would be any cutesy regrowing of a clone from these charred remains.

Using my foot to free my sword from viney ash, I stooped and picked up a rather too pleased for itself Drynwyn. Without a word, I dropped it back in its scabbard and followed behind Arthur and Bors.

Even before we set out on this quest, Merlin had been ragging on me for my overreliance on Drynwyn for all my death-dealing needs. I was beginning to see what he meant. It wasn't that I was ungrateful to the sword. It had gotten me out of more than my fair share of scrapes since I'd acquired it. And I'm fairly sure the Saxons would have been able to take Tintagel if it hadn't burned down that giant bridge and the cultivators conjuring it.

It was just . . . I couldn't help but feel I was supposed to be advancing past the stage where 'throw a magical sword at it' should be the solution to every problem.

At the risk of being accused of cheerleading again, my dear, what you feel is very encouraging. It shows that you are, even if it is just subconscious musings at the moment, recognising your potential. You instinctively recognise that you should have been able to defeat the Forest Guardian in another way. I should note that had you done so, you would doubtless have enhanced your cultivation.

"I'm not convinced thinking arson shouldn't be the go-to method for saying 'hello' is evidence of mystical growth, Big M."

In that, we can agree to disagree. Some people go through their entire lives thinking that just because they have a giant hammer, every problem must be a nail. I hope it goes without saying that this approach does not lead to successful cultivators. Without wishing to overstate the point, I would further note that the Morgan I met back in a field of corpses would not have spent too long agonising over the manner in which she dealt with hostile wildlife. Whether you like it or not, you are growing.

A vivid memory of ripping a wolf in half sailed across my vision.

Perhaps Merlin has a point, after all.

I idly wondered if the reason I had been keeping the Big M at arm's length of late was not that I found him to be a gigantic dickhead - ouch - but rather that I did not really want to have this 'progress on your journey' conversation. Because if I was going to admit that I was changing into a 'better' person, it kind of behoved me to do a little more to unpick what was different now compared to the old me.

And that was a scab I wasn't that keen to dig into.

I was not so filled with self-loathing that I didn't see that I had been making—largely—better choices since my reincarnation in the Dark Ages. Zizzie was always saying that if I could just break myself free of my doom spiral of chaos, I could actually have a chance to be happy.

Well, there were few more comprehensive breaks with twenty-first-century cultural malaise than being hit by a lorry and being reincarnated into the body of a Saxon spearman.

When you are ready to explore it further, my dear, I'll be here for you, like I've been there before. Just know that you are a very different person today than you were just a few weeks ago.

Hand's up, who had Merlin going all The Rembrandts on me ...

A surprised shout from up ahead saved me from a clapping montage. I ran forward to see what was up.

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It was bedlam.

Bors had pushed Arthur behind him, brandishing his axe in a defensive position. For his part, the Prince held Rhongomyniad braced before him as if in preparation to meet a charging boar.

I had another flashback of Morgan vs Wildlife. The great outdoors really did not seem to like me.

I quickly filled my hands with fiery Qi death and reached Bors' side, looking out for whatever enemy had so spooked them. I was unsure what I expected to be so threatening to these two exceptionally capable knights that they were white with fear.

But - and I cannot stress this enough - it was certainly not a tiny, deformed man in a dress sitting on a green, miniature, pot-bellied pig.

I let my Qi flow backwards and reached out to dip Arthur's spear towards the ground. "I know we're all on edge here, but shall we chill the jets a little?"

However, Arthur's eyes were wide with genuine terror, and he shrugged me off - refocusing his spear and cowering behind it. Baffled, I glanced at Bors and saw the same horror etched on his face.

These two were absolutely shitting themselves.

I've not always been known to read the room—I vividly recall singing 'I will survive' karaoke at my Auntie Dot's funeral —but even I could sense something was not quite right here.

Assuming that the newcomer was the cause of whatever was going down, I went down on my knees to be eye-to-eye with the little man in the dress.

Okay, so first things first, this wasn't quite a man.

On closer inspection, I could see his skin was rough and bark-like, almost camouflaging him against the gnarled trunks of the ancient trees surrounding us. Yet, on the other hand, his eyes were bright and impish beneath a tangle of wild, twiggy hair.

And that's not a colourful adjective.

His hair was actually made out of twigs.

Moreover, the little dude was wearing a dress made entirely of leaves and moss, which - and I need to be clear here - I could tell was absolutely my style. When we were done here, we were going shopping together.

"Giles is a boggart."

I'm not going to lie. I've become pretty comfortable with all manner of oddness since finding myself in Dark Age Cornwall and even I wasn't expecting the pig to speak. In response to these softly spoken words, Arthur and Bors both drew closer together and took a step back as if the porker had just shrieked a terrible battle cry.

I looked down further and met the eyes of the little green pig. It looked right back at me and then winked.

It seemed rude not to talk back. "Giles is a boggart?"

"Yes. That's why they're acting like that. Boggarts are annoying little shits for the most part, but they do have the useful ability to create potent auras of fear around them."

I looked back at the terrified figures of Arthur and Bors, and that made quite a lot of sense. The two of them were acting as if they were facing off against a dragon - I speak from personal experience that this is a uniquely terrifying thing - rather than . . . whatever this was.

"Do you mean when they're looking at him, he becomes whatever each of them most fears?"

"What? No. Don't be fucking stupid. Giles has a gland in his arse that stimulates insane amounts of adrenaline and cortisol. One whiff of his farts and, basically, it's Fear Town, population you. It's just your standard defence mechanism to an external threat. 'Becoming whatever you most fear' Fuck me. How would that work? With the best will in the world, Giles is basically a bunch of primal impulses in a nice dress. It's all he can do to stay sat on my back most of the time. Instantly decoding an individual's innermost fears and then projecting them outwards in a psychically linked terror spell is a task slightly above his mental capacity. You get me?"

"Right. I understand. And you are?"

"I'm a pig."

I could sense Merlin trying very hard to get my attention. However, I couldn't quite focus on what he was saying for some reason. "Right. You are a pig. And, let me just check this, you can apparently talk?"

"That's me. A talking pig. I'm also fucking green and of a species not known for being native to these isles."

"Okay . . . "

It seemed to me that Merlin was shouting quite loud now, but for the life of me, I couldn't decode the words.

"I mean, I could tell you my name was 'Hal the Distracting Hallucination' if that would help the penny drop?"

I'd like to say that it was at this stage that I snapped out of the spell I was under and immediately set about freeing Arthur and Bors from the vines that had sneaked out from the woods to wrap around them.

Unfortunately, despite every instinct crying out for me to wake up, I could not quite seem to manage it.

I watched as more dark green tendrils emerged from behind the Boggart/Pig combination and began reaching towards me. They slid across the forest floor in an unsettling way, reminding me of nothing so much as snakes on the hunt. There'd been an absolutely traumatic David Attenborough show - I think it was Planet Earth II - I'd seen a year or so back where a baby marine iguana was captured by some racer snakes.

Google it. Now. And prepare to cry.

Well, wipe your eyes and buckle up. Because that's basically me at this precise moment. These slithering things looked a little different from the vines of the Forest Guardian, but I couldn't help but feel they were likely to have a similar intent.

"Not quite," said the pig, "The Guardian would have pulled you into its maw and digested you over the next thousand years. We like to call that Sarlacc Style around here." There was a loud thump behind me as Bors, who had been making a pretty decent effort to fight back against what was happening, was eventually dragged down and toppled to the floor.

Without the added defence of the big man, Arthur quickly followed, and they were dragged past me to vanish into the trees.

"So whatever has us isn't planning on eating me?"

"Oh, it's absolutely planning on eating you. Eventually," said the pig. "But first . . . well, I suppose you will find out soon enough. How familiar are you with hentai?"

Bet you wished you had a flaming sword round about now, right?

Oh, do fuck off, Drynwyn.