“That’s some serious Jessica Fletcher energy you’ve got going on there, Merlin. Ever thought that, maybe, if you left these people alone, they wouldn’t all end up horribly murdered?”

Silence.

Was it possible I had finally exhausted Merlin’s last nerve? It said nothing good about my personality that spending such a short time with a mythical being capable of travelling across the aeons of space and time, I had already managed to bludgeon them into speechlessness. Maybe every single one of my exes was right after all?

I was just packing that wonderful thought away into the mental box marked ‘not enough therapy in the world’ when a low growl caught my attention. I spun around to see a disconcertingly large wolf enter the clearing. Not, I should be clear, that there would be a size of wolf that I would find concerting. Concerting: was that even a word? What was the opposite of disconcerting?

As with most moments of stress in my life, the verbal diarrhoea had begun.

“Any chance you have another one of the crow-cooking firebolts handy, Big M?”

Silence.

The wolf stalked towards me. Despite a number of relationships that had ended in a less-than-amicable way, I had never truly appreciated the majesty of being genuinely ‘stalked’. I can absolutely confirm this wolf did it with style. With each step, sway and undulation of its body, it well and truly stalked the shit out of me.

Backing away as fast as my legs could carry me, I searched Wulfnoð’s memories to see if there were any gems of wisdom to be gleaned there. It seemed the key to survival in such a situation as this was . . . to never be alone in the woods with a wolf of this size. In his extensive experience of such things, having at least six or seven warriors, each armed with a stone-tipped spear, was pretty much the minimum expectation for making it out of this situation alive.

Cheers for that, Wulfnoð. Never let it be said you don’t have my back.

I felt myself press against a tree. I was right at the edge of the clearing. I briefly considered running, but I didn’t think there were all those fairy stories about deep forests, young women and wolves because that was a viable survival scenario. “Good wolf. Nice wolf. Tell you what, there’s a whole battlefield of dead bodies over there. Give it a few hours, and it’ll be a veritable smorgasbord for a growing wolf. You don’t want to fill yourself up on this stringy body. I barely want to bother with it, truth be told. But it’s the only one I’ve got at the moment.”

If my words had any impact on the Big Bad Wolf, it didn’t stop it from getting closer.

There was a moment — a decent one, to be honest — where I basically just shrugged. I wasn’t sold on being reincarnated or iskeid or portalled or whatever the fuck you want to call this. I didn’t wake up this morning and have ‘get eaten by a wolf’ on my dance card, but I’m a broadminded girl and I’ve always been open to new experiences. I meant what I’d said to Merlin about being pretty much done with it all.

But then there had been the whole condemn your sister to never coming into existence plot twist and I needed some time to properly digest that. I’d run my race and had few regrets at punching my ticket out. Well, to be fair, I’d started running my race, got distracted by all the fun things there were to do rather than running and ended up in a blissful heap on the side of the road. But Zizzie? Nope. I wasn’t ready to call time for her. Yet.

Punch it on the nose.

All my life, I’ve suffered from intrusive thoughts. You know, the little voice in your head that tells you to do things you really shouldn’t: push your boss down the stairs, tell her she looks fat in that dress, step into the middle of the road.

For the most part, until recently, I’ve kept them at bay. But now, as I circled around, trying to keep a safe distance from the last sight Red Riding Hood’s grandma ever saw, I was wondering how often that little voice was, in reality, an ancient wizard seeking to teach me some sort of lesson about life, the universe and Qi.

Fill your fist with energy and punch it on the nose.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“You know you sound like an absolute mentalist when you say things like that. No sane person punches a wolf on the nose. That’s very close to the bit with all the teeth.”

It’s going to leap . . .

I threw myself to the left as the wolf suddenly bounded forward. Its jaws snapped inches from where my head had been, and I crashed with no elegance whatsoever to the ground. Hurriedly, I dragged myself back to my feet, just as the wolf turned to follow me, snuffling as it did so. I may have been anthropomorphising the whole thing a little, but I couldn’t help but imagine it grinning at my pathetic show of defiance.

This is an entirely mundane animal. If it had the faintest idea of your cultivation potential it would not dare to be within a hundred miles. Direct some Qi into your hands and kill it, we have more important things to discuss.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

There are several different schools of thought about how best to impart knowledge. Socrates, of course, pioneered the question-and-answer system. On the other hand, many favour the more direct, didactic approach. I, it will not surprise you to learn, subscribe to my own individual method.

“Which is?” The wolf and I had completed one entire circuit of the clearing and I sensed it was about to attack again.

What doesn’t kill the apprentice makes them stronger. I have given you the solution to your problem. It is now up to you.

With a sudden burst of speed, the wolf lunged towards me. Instinctively, I raised my arms, attempting to shield my face, and its teeth sliced into my forearm. I kick out, desperately trying to push it away. As the wolf was clearly still in ‘playing with its food’ mode, it backed away from my kick and looked at me, tilting its head as if to say, “is that the best you got?”

I scanned my surroundings frantically. There was literally nowhere for me to go, other than back towards the army. Proper frying pan and fire stuff. Cursing Merlin with every word I knew, I kept moving, trying not to turn my back to the wolf. It snarled and leaped again, with me diving to the right this time — got to keep things fresh— my heart racing. I could feel pain throbbing through my arm, but fear and adrenaline kept me moving.

I knew I couldn't outlast it. Wolves are built for sustained effort, and I'm — basically — built for eating cake and judging the sex lives of celebrities. I was already feeling the strain of the fight and the blood loss was a bitch. I need to end this quickly. I stooped and picked up a sizable rock. As the wolf approached for another pass, I swung with all my might, aiming for its head.

The impact barely registered — seriously, it's not even stunned — and it snaps and growls back at me. As it did so, I felt drool spatter my face. I recognise that was not the worst thing I had experienced in the last day or so, but this was my final straw for some reason.

My hands were suddenly hot. Not ‘tried-to-pull-the-baking-tray-straight-from-the-oven’ hot, more like they had suddenly filled with magic and turned into two orbs of pulsing light. Which was a pretty good description of what was at the end of my arms. Although, right now, it helped a bit to think of them as Wulfnoð’s arms.

The wolf bowled back into me and pinned me to the ground under its weight. In a panic, I grabbed its head to keep its teeth away from snapping around my head like a bear trap. The snarling was utterly disconcerting, quite apart from the approaching likelihood of being devoured.

In desperation, I slipped my glowing hands between its jaws to prevent them from chomping down on me. Blood flowed from bites there, as well as from my earlier arm wound. And with that, I was absolutely done with all this. I hadn’t been able to do much about a truck mowing me down on the main road, but I was not having ‘eaten by a wolf’ on my tombstone.

Without really knowing what I was doing, it occurred to me to try to pull the wolf’s jaws apart. I could hear it yelp in pain as its mouth was forced wide open. And then a bit more open. And then a bit more. And then I ripped the animal entirely in two with a final heave.

If I had found getting some of the animal’s drool on my arm to be pretty offensive, it was as to nothing to my response to the tsunami of blood, bodily fluids and crap that covered me from the dismembered carcass. I quickly added my own pool of vomit to the wonderful fragrance that now infected the air around me.

That was . . . quite something.

“Can’t talk, Merlin, being sick.”

Yes, that can often be a side-effect of a cultivator’s first use of their Qi.

“I think it’s more the smell of everything that should be inside a wolf suddenly being on the outside of me, to be honest. But sure, if you want. The Qi thing too.”

You should see if you can gather the essence from that beast. It will make you feel better.

“And after I do that, I’ll percolate the doodad on the thingymajib.”

Sorry, my language skill must have failed for a moment. That sounded like gibberish. Can you repeat it?

“Mate, I really don’t have a clue what I’m doing here. It’s been no time at all since I died, I’m suddenly in the body of a young boy, talking to Merlin, having just ripped a sodding wolf into two pieces. And I have no one around who will appreciate the joke I want to make.”

You can tell me the joke.

“Don’t patronise me, Big M. I know your deal is all about the Qi and the essence and the saving the world from shadowy forces that are killing potentials.”

I can do all that and still appreciate a good joke.

“Really?”

Really.

“Okay. Well, you see that wolf?”

I do.

“He tried to bite off more than he could chew.”

I’m ready for you to tell me the joke now.

“Fuck you, Merlin.”