The first problem we hit—okay, not exactly the first problem, but I’m keen for us actually to get this show on the road, and there’s only so much tragic backstory about this debacle I figure you’ll stick with—was where the hell we were going to construct a massive, magic stone formation.
According to Merlin, establishing the Meridian Stones wasn’t like slapping together a drystone wall for a sheep paddock. Look at me with all the relevant pastoral lingo!
Full disclosure: this is probably because I’ve spent a considerable amount of my winter downtime trying to lay a very good-looking shepherd.
It hasn’t gone well.
The shepherd himself—let’s call him Ewan, because that’s his name—seems to view me less as a potential squishy-times partner and more as a very dangerous, very talkative predator who won’t leave him alone. I blame my reputation. And possibly the time I accidentally immolated a small thicket while practising fire Qi within a stone’s throw of his grazing flock.
In my defence, those sheep are surprisingly judgmental.
Anyway, no matter what I’ve tried, Ewan has continued to prove to be a touch skittish. Every time I approached him, his eyes widened like he was already mentally drafting his will, and I swear he calculated the exact distance to the nearest exit at all times.
Having previously been a solid 6 – a 7 with the right lighting – I’ve really never needed to do much more in the way of wooing than get riotously drunk and fall sidewise into the nearest cock-owner. Thus, in my new, certifiable hottie body, I have been finding his reluctance to roll in the very literal hay somewhat frustrating.
It actually got so bad, that the last time I tried a direct approach, Merlin decided to pitch in and “coach” me.
Say something about the weather.
Hating myself with every fibre of my being, I ventured, “It’s looking a bit grey.”
Ewan nodded vigorously as though this was groundbreaking meteorological insight. He was visibly sweating, his thick forearms glistening as though carved from oak and dipped in honey. His jawline could have doubled as a whetstone, and his hair was a tousled mass of chestnut waves. Beneath the nervous twitch of his Adam's apple, his chest rose and fell with the kind of heaving masculinity that was pretty much making my bodice spontaneously combust.
Dude is a walking sculpture of rural virility.
Now, pivot to a compliment. In my experience, mortals love those. Something simple but sincere. Try not to mention his genitalia unless strictly necessary.
“You’ve got a steady hand with the flock,” I said, which I thought was both complimentary and relevant.
“Er… thank you, my Lady.”
Oh, excellent choice, my dear. A compliment for his manual dexterity. Very subtle. Now, casually introduce the idea of spending time together. Maybe suggest a shared activity. Herding, perhaps?
“Maybe I could help you with the sheep sometime?” At this point, for the sake of my self-worth, I think it is important to remind you exactly how long it has been . . .
Ewan’s expression, though, suggested less delight at the opportunity to spend more time with me, and more like I’d just invited his grandmother to an orgy. “Uh… they’re… they’re very… independent sheep.”
“Of course they are.” I could feel the heat rising to my cheeks. “Fiercely independent. That’s good in a sheep. What you are looking for, I imagine.”
Brilliant. You’ve terrified him into extolling the virtues of self-reliant livestock. Romance is surely imminent, my dear.
By the time Ewan stammered his way through an excuse to escape—something about a fence in urgent need of mending—I was pretty much out of farming-based small talk.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
This was about a month ago, and he’s been avoiding me ever since.
The driest of dry spells continues unchallenged.
Anyway, back to the Meridian Stones. Why not. Apparently, you don’t just pick a spot and start stacking. The leyline network is a finicky beast, and proximity to natural convergence points is non-negotiable, my dear.
While Tintagel had its charms—even during this shitty winter—it sat squarely in a leyline-free zone. Having Merlin hang around for too long like some magical bad tenant had royally messed all of that up. Too much Qi drawn for too long, too many rituals, too much enchantment—basically, Merlin’s Tower was a battery that had drained the surrounding land dry. Merlin, predictably, saw no issue with this.
I achieved great works here, my dear. Sacrifices had to be made.
The kicker, of course, was that the best, most effective places to set up the Meridian Stone were all a considerable distance into Saxon territory. Because why wouldn’t they be? It wasn’t enough that we had to wrestle with constructing a monument to harness unfathomable power; we had to do it while dodging angry warbands and their pointy bits of steel.
Powerful Qi convergences tend to attract conflict. And the strongest nodes? Always found in places of strife and bloodshed, my dear. It’s simply how the energy collects and amplifies.
“Great. So, we’re basically planning on setting up shop in the magical equivalent of a landmine field. Super.”
The closest viable spot was nestled in a forest not far from the Saxon stronghold of Caer Sais. It was thick with ambient Qi—Merlin had practically salivated at the description—but also thick with, you know, Saxons. The other option was a windswept plain near a fortress that looked like it was designed specifically to deter idiots like us.
“I’m just saying, Big M, this whole thing would be a lot easier if we weren’t risking imminent death.”
If it were easy, any fool could do it. Be proud, my dear—you’re not just any fool. You’re my fool.
“Awesome. Thanks. Loving that for me.”
The map is quite clear, he’d said. The convergence points are fixed. Tintagel is convenient for us, I grant, but it is not convenient for magic. Qi is seldom considerate of human needs.
“Why can’t we just tweak the leylines?”
Ah yes, let’s ‘tweak’ the ancient, mystical veins of the Earth, shall we, my dear? Perhaps we’ll bend the tides while we’re at it or realign the stars for better ambience. We go to the leylines; they do not come to us.
But that wasn’t the biggest problem I could foresee. Because, even if we zeroed in on the least objectionable spot for our little building project, how the fuck were we going to convince Arthur to lend us some of his knights – in the middle of a massive arms race - to drag massive stones across the countryside?
I’d put that worry to a side for a moment.
"Mate, where exactly are these stones supposed to be?" I asked. "Do we have to, I don’t know, smash them out of a quarry or something?"
Fortunately, they are already quarried. We merely need to find where they have been taken, liberate them from their current owners and then... rearrange them into the correct formation.
“Because nothing says heroic quest like debating topography and weatherproofing.”
Precisely.
I threw my hands up in frustration. "So let me get this straight. You’re telling me that there’s a bunch of magic rocks lying around, and we just have to find them and drag them into a neat little circle? And then I use their power to blast all the Saxon cultivators back to the stone age. And that's it?"
It is not quite so simple, but yes, in essence, that is correct. If my reading on this has been accurate, the majority of these stones are currently scattered across the land of Māgen. We must gather and raise them in the proper alignment before completing the appropriate ritual."
"Māgen... right," I muttered. That was a windswept, desolate expanse of grass and stone a week or so's ride to the northwest. Crucially, it was a fair way into Saxon territory. “And you’re telling me these stones are already waiting there? Well, I hope you’ve got some other poor sods lined up to do the heavy lifting because I’m not exactly built for hauling giant stones around the countryside."
I think you will find that Sir Bors will have a few ideas around who we can make use of, my dear. What we need from you is going to be far more important. Once the Meridian Stones are raised, you must anchor the Qi flow, channelling it into the structure and then blast the Saxons off the face of the planet.
"Well, that sounds much more my pace. So, while everyone else is off doing manual labour, I’ll be sitting in the middle of the world’s largest rock garden, meditating and signing kumbaya. Sounds lovely." This was starting to sound a lot more intense than I’d realised. "How much power are we talking here?"
More than enough, my dear, to turn the tide of the war.
And that’s when the obvious thing hit me.
The stones, the placement, the sheer scale of what we were planning. We weren’t just talking about a couple of rocks in a field, were we? This was something that was likely to be historically noteworthy. A structure like this.
Something that it seemed to me would have been remembered . . .
"Wait a second. You’re not talking about us building Stonehenge, are you?"
Yes, my dear. That is exactly what I am talking about
Fuckadoodledo.