I’d lay in my pit of dead pig, headless love interest and various body fluids for quite some time.

That’s a sentence they don’t tell you at school you will ever write.

You’re going to get up at some stage, aren’t you?

I didn’t say anything.

Look, I can see, in retrospect, that I may have overreacted slightly there.

I still didn’t say anything.

In my defence, it was just good defensive instincts. He looked like he was going to attack you. I took care of business.

I said quite a lot to that.

“What part of the gorgeous man bending down to help me up - who had just killed the monster attacking me, let us not forget. A monster you’d singularly failed to attempt to deal with - looked like it needed you to ‘take care of business?’

There was a gleam in his eye. I could see the signs.

“Well, there’s no fucking gleam there anymore, is there? What is it with this place? I can’t move for new acquaintances losing their heads within a few minutes of meeting me.”

I wouldn’t blame yourself entirely for that, if I was you.

“I don’t blame myself! I blame the Dicks. I blame you. And most of all, I blame the fucking wizard who got me into all this and then fucked off when the going got tough!”

Didn’t you banish him?

“And you can fuck off and all!”

The silence stretched out for some time after that.

In the end, it was the buzzing of the flies that stirred me from my torpor. There had always been something about that noise that massively unsettled me.

I’d been seven when my mum had walked out on us. She’d soon return, and this vanishing act would be a regular occurrence by the time I was in my teens, but they say you always remember your first time.

I’m not sure what finally pushed her too far. I assume he’d come home drunk once too often and, that night, had said something or done something out of line. Whatever it was, she’d had enough and packed an overnight bag.

And she’d just left.

That first time, she was gone for two weeks. Looking back on it now, I see this was just about the most irresponsible thing ever.

By the time she returned, complete with a suspiciously healthy tan and an appetite for tapas that lasted a month, the household was in an utter shambles.

Dad worked, and he drank. That was his role in life, and everything else was down to be organised by the women. In the enforced absence of Mum, that meant me and my sister. Seven and five, respectively.

I mean, he wasn’t so delusional he expected us to cook for him - we had a glorious fortnight of takeaways to sustain us - but he didn’t have any interest in any of the things that, you know, responsible adults keep an eye on.

The bins built up. We ran out of clean dishes. Clothes were re-worn again and again. And the unused food in the fridge rotted.

So, by the time Mum bothered to return, it would be fair to say we had somewhat of a fly problem.

I give you that little bit of trauma porn because it’s important for you to know why when the flies appeared around my deceased axe-husband, I utterly lost my shit.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Like, a complete Brittany-shaving-her-head, Mel-being-pulled-over, Donald-just-existing existential breakdown crisis.

Being wedged tight into the pit hardly helped me dial it down once the panic started.

I don’t know how long I’d been freaking out before Drynwyn cleared what passed for its throat.

I can probably do something about the flies if you want?

I wasn’t really in a place to answer, but after a few moments, I felt the warmth of its flames kick into life.

This had a number of exciting impacts.

Firstly, it turned out that Drynwyn’s flames were napalm death for the surrounding insect community. This cheered me up no end. It’s the little things.

Secondly, by flash-frying everything in the pit, I was suddenly not as stuck tight as I had previously been. Clambering out from the white-hot hole in the ground and stretching my legs a little further equalised my mood. All those self-help books weren’t lying. Exercise really did help.

Thirdly, and this kicked in a little while later, once I had adequately got my shit together, it appeared that Drynwyn, as well as being a stunningly effective fly flamethrower, possessed some nifty butchery/cookery skills.

I guess what I’m saying is that, in pretty short order, I was happily munching on warm slices of crispy wild boar, and the least said about my epic meltdown, the better.

Things were starting to look up.

Hang on one moment.

“What?” I put down my handful of boar and looked around for danger.

No. I think it’s okay.

“What!”

I thought, for a second, I might have mixed something up. But I’m sure it’s alright.

“Mixed up what?”

It’s not like I have all that many senses to rely on. The one looks just like the other.

I was starting to feel a bit less perky. “What are you talking about?”

You’d be able to tell the difference, right? I mean, you’ve eaten wild boar before, so you’d know, wouldn’t you?

I looked down at the pit that was still glowing red-hot from Drynwyn’s heat. I’d thought that the ash of bones which lay at its very bottom was all that remained of the woodsman.

“Are you hinting that there’s a chance you may have muddled up pork loin for... longpig?”

No. Not at all. Not a chance. Well, not a big one. Probably not. There was a pause. I mean, fucking hell, if you’re so picky, you cook next time.

Having heartily thrown up for several minutes, I went for a dip in the river.

*

Scrubbing myself clean of the filth that had attached itself to me in the last couple of days turned out to be just what I needed.

I’d found residue of that first wolf under my fingernails, and that was quite apart from what had covered me during that brief and disastrous first date. Sloughing that all off was a page that absolutely needed turning.

I’d left all my armour on the riverbank, and Drynwyn was scouring it clean with its flames. Fortunately, the dragon had hoarded various chests that contained serviceable underclothes, so I’d been able to add what remained of my tattered garments to the pyre. We’d had a brief disagreement about me being naked in front of it.

I’m a fucking sword. You all look the same to me. Squishy sacks that leak from various places when prodded. Rhyddrech Hael might have used me in ways for which I was not designed, but I’m thrilled not to repeat the experience.

I didn’t think there was much to argue about after that.

The water did a great job of calming me down. Yes, things had been a touch intense for the last few days, but, on the plus side, I was alive and - for the first time in a long time - I was actually glad to be so. When that arrow had streaked towards me, I’d had the chance to have let it hit me and tap out from it all. That I’d instinctively thrown up the shield suggested I wasn’t quite as nihilistic as had hitherto been the case.

There were worse things in life than to be a wizard.

Of course, one of those worse things would be it turning out I had cannibalised the remains of a potential soulmate. Still, I had some world-class 'bottling up your problems’ skills and would be putting them into effect in the near, medium and far future.

I self-consciously left the water - I’m still a fucking sword; you don’t need to cover up the fatbags - and found I could equip the clothes in my inventory just by thinking about it. That was good news, as it meant I was finally starting to regenerate some Qi. A glance in my artist’s studio confirmed the cupboard was no longer completely barren: a thin trickle of purple was making its way around my pristinely clean channels. Even with this tiny bit on the move, I could see the whole system was working much more efficiently.

With a touch, I had my shiny suit of armour back on and, remembering what Drynwyn had said about it being cultivator armour, I encouraged the tiniest drip of paint to find its way to it during the cycle. Every little helps.

Are our panties now sufficiently unbunched?

I looked down at the sword and, for a moment, thought about dropping it in the river. Who knows, maybe that was what I was supposed to do? Perhaps, in a few years’ time, someone was supposed to find it in the water and conjure up a whole mythology over the woman who had left it there. Then they’d maybe even give it to King Arthur at just the right moment to secure the kingdom ...

But no. Strange ladies lying in rivers distributing swords was no basis for a system of government.

Or something like that.

With a sense of regret that I might be making a colossal error, I swept Drynwyn up into its scabbard, took a deep breath and walked back to rejoin the makeshift road.

Merlin was bound to make it back from wherever I had banished him sooner or later, right? Right?