It took us two days of leisurely travel to reach our destination.

I say 'leisurely', but this was far from a leisurely stroll. It was a relentless battle for survival, where every hundred feet, we were bombarded by kamikaze attacks from the trees, each one more ferocious than the last.

Our path was littered with threats. Wolves, goblins, wyverns, and giant big cats lurked in the shadows, ready to pounce. Even the occasional Troll, with its massive frame and menacing growl, showed up to try and tear us a new one.

The relentless assaults forced us to move at a painstakingly slow pace in a perpetual battle formation. What should have been a three or four hour stroll became a gruelling march, with men carrying heavy shields that were constantly under attack.

As we made camp on the first night, all of us thoroughly knackered from the 24/7 slogathon, Tresaith suddenly appeared beside me. He seemed to have a habit of doing that.

"I have come to apologise."

Considering he and his fellow Fae had been doing far more than their fair share of ambush slaughtering, I wasn't sure exactly what he was getting at. I tried telling him so, but he shook his perfect head regretfully.

"You do not understand. Our presence is drawing so much of the forest filth towards you. Your men are taking wounds meant for us."

That gave me a bit of a pause.

I had wondered what was causing the sudden upsurge in attacks, but figured it was something to do with moving towards the final Step of the quest for Caeldfwch. I hadn't thought the issue might have been that the Fae were shit-magnets.

Eventually, though, I shrugged my shoulders. "It's not like you're cowering behind our shields. You guys are more than pulling your weight."

I was probably doing him a disservice. Each and every one of the Fae was a moving death machine that made Lancelot look pacifistic. They were a massacre-on-legs, whether with bow, sword, spear, or just plain piling out Qi like it was on sale. Sure, the Britons were doing their bit, but I felt like he was wearing the hairshirt a little tight.

"Even so. We have discussed staying behind you and letting you reach the Glade without us drawing every dark soul in the vicinity upon you."

"Dude, as far as I understand it, without you guys there to smooth our entrance, we're going to be as unwelcome at the glade a s siphilitic stripper at a Women's Institute meeting."

Tresaith smitled. "Orwyn said the same. Without the incomprehensible simile, of course."

"Your mum speaks sense. Look, we're all shattered, but we're not taking terrible losses. And part of the deal with this quest was to bind the kings together. Nothing does that better than fire and blood." Even as I said it, though, the words felt pretty hollow. No matter how well disposed the average spearman in the column may feel towards Arthur, relations with their leaders - Owain aside - were pretty shit.

As might be expected, Beric had taken being denied being heard by the Fae really well. It was pretty funny to see him try to engage them in conversation. But not quite as funny as seeing these ancient, beautiful beings play an elaborate game of 'Can you hear something?' each time he tried it on. If a wolf didn't pick him off, the dude was a few more little chats away from stroking out, judging by his purple face each time it happened.

Corys was . . . occupied. In fact, if I had a complaint about the Fae, it would be that a) Allavan was not quite as present in the front line as her mates, and b) this was because she was having very loud sex with the King of Dehuebarch. I had the sense his retinue was feeling a bit put out as they were fighting for their lives while the king they were defending was being repeatedly, enthusiastically, screwed.

Of our detractors, that left Mark. I hadn't seen the fat slob since the whole 'I have no son' debacle, but Arthur reported the King of Gwynedd was in a particularly foul mood. He had forbidden his spearmen from working under Arthur's direction, which was nice, and any orders which impacted on his men needed to be approved by him before they were put into action. This was, as I'm sure the bastard expected, causing as many problems as any number of goblin strikes.

Tresaith cocked his head to one side. "Well, you know your people better than I. The apology has been made." He stood to make his leave, picking up a dark green leaf from the forest floor as he did so and popping it into his mouth as if that were the most normal thing in the world.

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"What's that?" I asked, noting it was lit up by my alchemy skill as soon as I asked the question. Tresaith paused and then swallowed it down. "It's called Widow Weed. My people use it as a way of increasing our resistances."

I plucked a leaf myself and rubbed it between my fingers. The dark green surface released a pungent clear liquid when squeezed. "And eating it does something for your . . . motherfucker!"

My fingers suddenly felt like they were on dire. I looked down and could see bone.

Tresaith watched me dance around my campfire with a neutral expression. "You may want to be careful with the liquid the leaves contain."

"You think!" I pulled a bottle of spring water from my inventory and doused my hand in it, trying to ignore the fact my fingers were vanishing. Which is, surprisingly, pretty hard to do. When the water did nothing for me, I ordered Drynwyn to napalm the stuff off me.

It was disappointingly okay with that. I don't know; I'd have appreciated just a few follow-up questions before flame-throwing my hand. However, considering that this seemed to do the trick, I decided to let it go as I flooded the damaged area with Qi to grow it back.

I turned to the Fae. "You eat that shit?"

"Of course," Tresaith said, picking up another lead, squashing it and releasing what I was now going to think of as battery acid. "As your level of cultivation increases, you will find it increasingly challenging to progress. At the higher levels, you will need to actively seek out things outside your capabilities."

Tresaith held up his hand where the juice from the Widow Weed sat on his skin without burning holes straight through. "It has been several hundred years since I could coax a reaction on my skin. Hence why I must consume it."

I looked at him with undisguised horror. I couldn't even imagine what it would feel like to have that stuff go down my throat. And it goes without saying this was an area where I had some expertise.

He is speaking a lot of sense, my dear.

I didn't reply. We'd agreed Merlin would keep his head down as low as possible around the Fae. That he had whispered those words at all suggested he thought this was important to learn.

I - carefully - picked another lead. "So, I should find a way to torture myself with something like this?"

Tresaith shrugged. "I am not of your race, little one. I would not like to offer advice on your own cultivation journey. However, if you seek to move things forward, I am not against stressing the importance of challenge to you."

I dropped into my Artist's Studio and grabbed a bunch of my alchemy books. I didn't recognise the words 'Widow Weed', but I thought I'd come across a picture of the leaf on one of the pages about poisons. "Any advice, Big M?"

Keep flicking. I'm unfamiliar with this particular plant, but the more toxic poisons will be towards the back.

I moved toward the end of a red book with a skull and crossbones on the front. After a few minutes of skimming, I saw the leaf I was looking for. "That looks right to you, Big M?"

My word, he said after a few moments. It is, but I have to caution you about that potion. It is rather an advanced one.

I scanned through the recipe. Along with the crushed outcomes of several bunches of Widow Weed, there were a couple of other unusual materials I had never heard of. "Any of the rest of this something you know about?"

The book containing my inventory started glowing, which I took as a good sign. I reached up, took it off its shelf, and let it open to the appropriate page. Did I mention my new 'happy space' is incredible? From what I could see, I already had several thousand of each ingredient in there. Voltigern's Dragon was quite the hoarder.

"So, I guess I have the stuff I need to make - " I squinted at the title of the recipe - "Potion of Agonishing Death. Catchy. These ancient alchemists really do know the secret of a powerful brand."

It is not a pleasant potion at all, my dear. There are really only two uses for something such as this brutal.

"Assassinations and skill-ups?"

You have the right of it. If you are wholly committed to this path - and I will grudgingly admit there is merit in what you suggest- you must progress very carefully.

I popped back into the real world - noting Tresaith was gone. The Fae did not seem to be affected by the time dilation within my Artist's Studio, which was weird - and swiped a bunch of Widow Weed, dropping it straight into my cauldron.

Grinding the leaves up, I had a moment of worry that the acid would eat out the bottom of the pot, but I guess Treasures of Britain are just built a bit different.

In no more than a few moments, I had a small depth of clear, thick liquid, which I was absolutely sure would chew through anything I put in there.

I took a couple of hours, and the sun was just starting to rise before I got to the end of the recipe. The liquid had turned a deep, disturbing red and smelt like the most overspiced curry I had ever encountered in the Balti Triangle.

I tried to dip one of my empty beakers in, but it obviously melted before it even broke the surface of the potion. This stuff was not here to play.

Encouraged by Merlin, I tried surrounding a drop of it with Earth Qi - stable, solid, unreactive, my dear - and managed to lift a small blob of it out of the cauldron and deposit it in a beaker.

The little sphere of brown Qi surrounding a malevolent red centre rattled around like a marble straight from hell. I gave it an experimental shake, but when it didn't do anything immediately traumatic, I felt safe spending the day's journey to the Glade carefully encasing little drops of the poison in Earth Qi and stowing them away.

By the time the cauldron was empty, I had over two hundred. According to my inventory, they were called 'Pills of Agonising Death'. However, despite that snazzy bit of PR, I hadn't yet been able to bring myself to swallow one of them.

Then Maewyn was suddenly breaking formation, calling ahead of him down the track.

"We return. And we bring guests!"

It appeared we had reached the Glade.