“Fuck me, dude. What happened?”

I think Melehan smiled back at me. But it’s hard to tell when someone has no lips. “Ah, the Celt. It’s good to hear your voice again. In answer to your question, though, unfortunately, quite a lot happened.”

“Fucking hell. You’re an absolute wreck. How come they didn’t just kill you?” Bors there, showcasing the empathy for which he is so well known.

The wizard shrugged, and tears came to my eyes at the uneven way his shoulders moved. Melehen was in unbelievably lousy shape. This wasn’t just the sort of thing that happened when you pissed the wrong person off. That got you dead. This was what happened you pissed off a complete an utter Hannibal Lector of a psychopath.

I doubt there was an inch of him that didn’t carry a scar.

There was a pause as we all took in the sheer volume of suffering the man in front of us represented. Bors was the first to rally. “Well, let’s not worry about that for now. Let’s get you out of here.” He picked Melehan up with comical ease and slung him over one shoulder.

Morgan ...

“Not right now, Big M.” Judging by the lack of screams of alarm coming from the direction in which we’d come if we carefully retraced our steps, we had every chance of getting out of this alive. “Let’s get Melehan somewhere safe and then review the next steps.”

My dear ...

“Dude, give it a rest for a second, will you? Are we all agreed? Back the way we came, stash the wizard and then see where we are at?”

Arthur - who, like a child, was not speaking to me - turned to lead the way, followed by Bors carrying the wizard, with me covering the rear.

We’d made it about halfway back to the bridge - or nine dead Saxons if that was how you preferred to count things - when I felt the world . . . I think the only way to put it is that everything blurred.

One moment, we were moving reasonably stealthily through the woods, and the next, it was as if we were leaving vivid after-images all around us. Time had not slowed down - we were still travelling as quickly as we were before - but we were leaving a smeared trail of colour behind us as we went. As I watched, that light became transparent and faded after a few seconds.

“Merlin? What the fuck?”

I have been trying to warn you, my dear.

“Well, less of the ‘I told you so’ and more of the exposition, please.”

Someone is pushing on the fabric of reality around us. I do not know how better to explain it, but whatever they are doing is stretching things on this side to breaking point.

I watched, with horrified fascination, as Bors-carrying-Melehan squashed up, then stretched out to about the length of a double-decker bus until finally resolving back to something approaching normal scale.

It was like the world had become a House of Mirrors. “Okay. So this is creepy as fuck. What can we do about it?”

I don’t even know what is causing it. I have never seen anything like that before. Someone is using colossal amounts of Qi to rupture reality, and I imagine this visual phenomenon is a side-effect of that outpouring of energy rather than the actual purpose.

Sensing I was falling behind, Bors stopped and looked around. “What’s wrong, Celt?”

I nearly lost my lunch at how his face bubbled and writhed as he turned around. “Does everything look alright to you?”

He glanced around and shrugged, and if I thought the way Melehan’s tortured frame moved was grotesque, then I found myself needing a whole vocabulary for body horror to describe what I was now looking at adequately. Basically, the world was increasingly looking like Dali had painted it. While drugged. And half blind. With no fingers.

The disturbance is taking place at a spiritual level. For those not sensitive to such things, I doubt they will notice anything amiss.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Bors, mate. I’m really struggling. Merlin thinks something is going on with Qi in this area.”

“People, we need to hurry up!” Arthur had returned, and fuck me if he didn’t look like Francis Bacon had painted him. Trust me. The ‘Study of Isabel Rawsthorn’. It’s worth a quick google so you understand how very close I was to losing all of my shit.

“Big M, what’s my play here? Close my eyes and hope it all goes away?”

I think it might be too late for that, my dear. Oh, my word! It’s coming through!

“What is? What’s coming thr -”

*

Merlin felt his connection to Morgan torn away as a . . . hand reached through the boundaries of reality and snatched her away.

It was such a brutally unexpected moment that he wasted valuable seconds in outraged shock before recognising he had started to fade away. In a panic, he cast around for a Qi anchor to keep his essence from drifting into the afterlife.

There were not that many games in town.

With a grimace, he coiled himself around the shattered remains of Melehan’s spirit and clung on.

These fragments I have shored against my ruins.

The wizard’s body shrieked and lashed out at the unexpected invasion of his soul, causing Bors to swear, drop him, and stumble. “Will someone tell me what the fuck is going on!”

Angry Saxon shouts could be heard in the near distance, and Arthur forced the big man to his knees in silence. When they recovered their composure, the Prince hissed, “Where’s the Celt gone?”

“What? What do you mean?” Bors whispered back, resettling a wriggling Melehan under his arm and peering around them. “She was just here!”

Wizard, listen to me. You need to tell them she’s been taken. Someone with an insane level of cultivation has just reached through the fabric of reality and plucked her from her place in the world.

Melehan shook his head rapidly from side to side, clearly in distress. “No. No. No. Not in my head. You can do whatever you want to my body, but you cannot have my mind. No! No! No!”

If Merlin had still had teeth, he would have ground them in intense frustration. Why could someone stolid and sensible like Bors not have just a drop of Qi? That would have made all this much easier. However, they were where they were. And he needed to get his message through. Needs must, and all that. Wizard, I am very sorry indeed for what I am about to do. It is hugely unethical, and if the need were not quite so dire, I would not have considered it. However, it is, so I have.

Merlin pushed Melehan’s mind to one side with a shove and took the reins. Had the Saxon wizard not spent much of the last few weeks being brutally tortured, his grip on reality would never have been loose enough for Merlin to have even conceived of attempting such a thing. As it was, Melehan was just the right amount of bat-shit crazy for what Merlin attempted to come off.

So, for the first time since his death, the greatest wizard in British history opened real, physical eyes.

Well, no.

Of course, he didn’t. Because someone had recently pressed the tip of a red-hot poker into both eyeballs. He/Melehan could still hear the hiss and smell the evaporating goo. But no matter.

A quick cycle of Qi - did the Saxon conceive of his Qi in terms of sand blowing on a beach? That was very strange - and the eyeballs reinflated.

In fact, while he was here, he might as well do the Saxon a few more good deeds to make up for this horrible liberty.

In a few heartbeats, Merlin had reversed all of the damage inflicted, regrowing multiple things lopped off and realigning bones.

Really, with all of this damage, it was quite a miracle the man had retained any sanity whatsoever.

Looking around the sandy beach where Melehan visualised his Qi, Merlin found the Saxon wizard sitting on the shore, staring out at the sea. Without knowing why, the sight seemed to inspire a few words of forgotten poetry—Hieronymo’s mad againe.

Merlin moved to sit next to the hunched figure. Look, I’m sorry about all this. I imagine it feels like an appalling violation. Especially after everything you’ve been through. I just need to let Bors and Arthur know what has happened to Morgan. And I don’t think you are quite in the right mind to pass on the message. As soon as that’s done, I’ll pass the body back.

Melehan’s soul - if that’s what this figure was - did not respond, pulling his knees even tighter under his arms.

Okay. Well, you should know I have fixed most of the damage, so it will be as good as new when you return it. Better, probably. But, for now, I will just take it out for a brief spin. Back before you know it.

Merlin returned to reality in Bors’ arms.

Arthur and the big man were shouting at each other. And quite a number of Saxons were closing in on their position.

“We’re not going anywhere until we figure out where Morgan went!”

“And I’m telling you, as your Prince, that unless we get out of here right now, it won’t matter. Because we will be dead!”

Merlin put a hand - it was good to have one of those again - on Bors’ chest and tapped urgently. “I can explain everything that has happened, but you need to get to safety as soon as possible. If you can follow the Prince back over the bridge, I promise I will help you locate Morgan.” A familiar face swam into Melehan’s mind. That was a bit surprising. “And apparently the Princess Guinevere, too. But you must run now!”

Bors looked around wildly but, seeing no alternative, he reluctantly followed Arthur back towards the bridge and then over to the other side and cover.

He laid Merlin down and fixed him with a ferocious expression. “Now, wizard, tell me what happened!”

Merlin took a deep breath - he enjoyed being able to do that - and stood up. “I am afraid Morgan has been taken. Someone with astonishing power locked upon her position and tore a hole in reality to pull her through to their side.”

“Who?” Arthur thrust his spear into the ground with frustration. “Beyond Merlin, who would have the strength to do that?”

Merlin shook Melehan's head. “That is what most troubles me, my Prince. I have no idea.”