Where the fuck did she go?

Opening my eyes, I was suddenly very aware I was on my lonesome in the prison corridor. It seemed OG Morgan had been as good as her word and had fucked off to spend some quality time with her Qi.

While I was happy for her - and pleased not to need to come up with a new name. Think of my monogrammed night linen! - I couldn't help but feel she could have waited until I'd escaped.

Even apart from having her as backup - after what felt like aeons in the time loop with Drynwyn - I'd quite enjoyed having someone to talk to who had access to a greater range of verbs and adjectives.

She was standing here one moment, and the next . . . poof. Fuck me, why can't you do actually useful cultivation shit like that?

Ignoring the sword, I instead took a good look left and right. The corridor of cells continued to stretch out in an endless line, but it didn't fill me with such a sense of despair as it did previously. Now that I was sure the day wouldn't reset again, I could feel my naturally sunny and optimistic personality return.

Are you fucking high or something? You're giving off the weirdest aura.

Gritting my teeth, I repeated to Drynwyn what Morgan had told me about who was responsible for our transportation to this little bit of paradise.

"Fucking hell. Aurelius Ambrosius?! What's with all the old crew coming out of the woodwork? Next thing you'll be telling me is that you have Constantine the Great tucked under your left tit."

I was happy to clarify I wasn't breast-smuggling Roman Emperors.

So, this was all well and good, but stood around gossiping like a couple of fishwives wasn't going to get us out of here.

That was an odd simile. It's one my mum said all the time about me and my sister. I used to think there were women whose role in life was to seek out and marry cod.

Fuck me, where did that come from . . .

I need to get a grip. I vigorously shook my head back and forth as if that could shake some of the loose screws out. Not sure it helped over much.

So, left or right?

Instinctively, I felt myself turning towards the right as the most likely way out. Even without most of my techniques, I was still a cultivator, and thus, my initial gut instinct must count for something. Right? But then I remembered reading something somewhere that because we have better control of our dominant hands, we unconsciously associate good things with our "fluent side of space." So, it might not be so much that I was experiencing a Qi-informed instinct here, but that it was more likely just because my right hand got more of the action.

Although not recently.

Perhaps I could equate some of my woolly-headedness to an unprecedentedly epic dry spell.

Goodness, I couldn't keep myself focused.

"Left or right, Drynwyn?"

What?

"We need to get out of here before someone realises I'm no longer stuck in a time loop. Both ways look the same to me and, I'm not going to lie, I'm starting to worry I'm not quite all here. Left or right?"

Rhyddrech Hael always used to say that if you worry, even for a moment, that you might be mad, then you definitely aren't. Of course, he also practised his deep-throating technique with frozen weasels, so take that fucking advice as you find it. Come on then, let's have a look at the options.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Feeling oddly self-conscious, I held Drynwyn at full-length, pointing down towards the left-hand side of the corridor, whilst it 'hemmed' and 'huhhed' and made various cryptic comments for a bit. Then I did the same for it on the right-hand side, and he went through the same rigmarole.

After a good few minutes of earnest muttering, I couldn't take it anymore. "Well? Which way do you think we go?"

No fucking clue.

Fucking A.

Okay, let's think about this logically. I have a lifetime of experience making truly bad decisions based on my gut. Or at least an organ in the general vicinity of my gut. Therefore, it stood to reason that if I was slightly inclined to take the right-hand corridor, it was just good sense to play the odds and stride confidently to the left.

If all else fails, do the absolute opposite of your instincts. Job done.

As we walked past rows and rows of identical-looking cell doors, I was happy to let Drynwyn regal me with story after story of the legend of Aurelius Ambrosius.

I had a very - very - vague memory of his appearance in the books about Camelot I loved when I was younger. If he ever made an appearance in my favourites - 'The Mists of Avalon' and 'The Once and Future King' - then I couldn't remember much about him. He was, now I think on it, a pretty important warlord in a book I enjoyed called 'The Crystal Cave' - but that was more about the life of Merlin than anything else.

And I genuinely didn't think either of the big beasts - Malory or De Troyes - mentioned him at all. Or at least, much more than just one of Arthur's ancestors.

Drynwyn, though, in its own unique way, was filling in the gap in my education.

The way the sword told it, Aurelius and Uther were very much the Cain and Abel of the Dark Ages. The Thor and Loki. Maybe even the Beyoncé and the Solange. Although that last might be overstating the levels of duplicity, violence and general skulduggery.

From all the tales, I was developing a very clear picture in my head of a giant slab of muscle with exceptionally thin skin who just couldn't get enough of showing the world how big his cock was and - in particular - how much bigger it was than his younger brother's.

By the fiftieth time I heard about a raid, or a shield wall, or a siege where Aurelius went out of his way to rub his little bro's face in just how awesome the big dog was, I felt I knew him pretty well.

Basically, as far as I could tell, Aurelius Ambrosius was a dick who should count himself very lucky it took Uther so long to decide to drive a spear through his heart.

The more I heard about some of the things Aurelius got up to in his youth, the more I felt myself re-evaluating my feelings about the Pendragon.

With such a colossal douche as a brother, he must have had an absolute clusterfuck of an upbringing. If the only model of affection he had was someone who seemed to delight in demonstrating how much weaker and more pathetic he was, it was hardly surprising he wasn't exactly Mr Available Dad to Arthur.

When I got back, I was giving Uther the number for my therapist.

However - and this felt pretty important considering the whole 'ripped me out of reality and stuck me in a time loop' thing - at no stage, in any of the stories, did Drynwyn mention Aurelius was a cultivator.

Nah, that sort of shit was all Merlin. I felt Drynwyn shudder a little in its scabbard as if reliving a bad memory. It wasn't until a bit after Uther shish kabobed Aurelius that any of that cultivating bollocks began. Merlin was absolutely the first of them I heard about. But OG Morgan, Nimue, Mim the Bitch Witch and Taliesin all rocked up in short order after that. Aurelius was dead and gone by then.

"Apparently not."

I couldn't help but notice we didn't seem to be getting anywhere during our Great Escape. We'd been walking for a good ten minutes, and as far ahead as I looked, the corridor stretched on and on.

Although . . .

I squinted and peered forward. It looked like one of the cell doors was open a little way ahead.

Drawing Drynwyn, I quickened my pace into a run, closing the gap much quicker than expected. I still sometimes forgot that, since getting more serious about my cultivating, I was a fucking ripped athlete. This was a whole new world for someone who had gotten out of breath looking for the remote.

I drew up a little short of the door and began approaching it cautiously. Oddly, after rows and rows of locked doors, it appeared that a second door hung open not that much further up the corridor.

It was all very strange.

It wasn't until I dipped my head into the first of the rooms that I realised what was going on. I confirmed it by looking into the second, where a broken set of chains lay on the floor.

Fuck me, we've walked around in a circle!

I stood back and looked left and right again. This wasn't just a really long corridor. It was presumably one long corridor in a fucking massive circular tower. It must be big enough that it looked like we were walking in a straight line when, in fact, we were - ever so slightly - curving around.

But if this was a tower, we'd walked the entire circumference without seeing a way up or down to other floors.

And that was fucking worrying.