Two hundred and thirty.

It took two fucking hundred and thirty Inferior 'Elixirs of Wellness' before I managed to produce one that was labelled 'Common' when it was dropped into my inventory.

That's a lot of heart moss.

It's also an awful lot of Qi. Over the course of this little experiment, I'd tapped out most of my mana stones and was dangerously close to completely emptying my Artist's Studio of paint.

However, rather than feeling that empty, sickening feeling I’d come to associate with running on Qi fumes, I felt . . . satisfied.

It was like - and forgive me here, I've never actually done it, so I'm extrapolating from all available evidence - I'd run a marathon for which I’d been training really, really hard.

We're going to stop now, aren't we? I need a fucking break. I only have so much rage to keep the fire burning.

“Yep. Let's pause there." I stood, wincing, lifted the cauldron off Drynwyn and slotted it back in my inventory.

Interestingly, passing the 'Inferior' threshold meant I now had a whole new page in my Artist's Studio dedicated to my alchemical efforts. The Cauldron and two hundred and thirty 'Inferior Elixirs of Wellness' were in there alongside one very smug-looking 'Common' one.

The scroll I was currently following was there, but—and this was a particularly nice touch—a whole row of other scrolls and tomes (presumably sorted from my wider inventory) concerning alchemy had arranged themselves there too.

Even better, I found I could read through them while cycling - as long as I didn't take them out of that page. This meant I was capable of genuine multitasking for the first time in my life. Of course, that is, if you don't count snorting a line of something that was possibly washing powder whilst blowing my dealer and downing a bottle of Jack Daniels. Are we counting on that? Now, I didn't think so, either.

The first thing I realised, browsing through the material, is that ancient alchemists thought a lot of themselves. You'd have assumed they'd found a cure for cancer the way they spoke about their "wondrous and prodigious art."

Okay. That's a bad example.

There is a potion for the “dissolving of unwanted growths and lesions” - but that could be aimed at targeting ex-boyfriends for all I knew.

The list of ingredients for that one was so long and comprehensive that I doubted I'd be troubling the good people in Copenhagen for one of their prizes any time soon.

To be honest, I could probably have coped with all the self-congratulation these alchemists were getting up to if their prose had been better. At the very least, they could have done more to make it easier to identify actual advice and recipes from the more verbose reflections.

Take this as an example. "I was walking through a dappled wood and spied upon the perfect babbling brook in all creation." At art school, I spent much time around boys of a certain age who fancied themselves quite the Romantic wordsmiths. I thus felt I had a reasonably high tolerance for flowery bullshit.

Some of this stuff, though, was off the charts.

Nevertheless, between the "dazzling luminance of the night sky" and the "sweet aroma of freshly tilled earth"—these guys had definitely partaken of Elixirs of Wellness if you know what I'm saying—there were more than a few valuable hints.

For example, the quality of your cauldron was directly linked to the quality and quantity of substances you could produce. If I had any doubts whether Morgan's gift was decent, they were dispelled by the reading of a particular alchemist who called himself Elgicaramus the Magnificent - I assume the name was made up; his writing reeked of being an Eric.

This dude had spent eight years researching and perfecting the art of making a Common Elixir of Wellness.

Suddenly, two hundred and thirty goes didn't seem quite so shabby.

To be fair to him, Eric appeared to have spent most of his time trying to locate a cauldron that he could force enough of his Qi into to raise the quality of the secret sauce above ‘Inferior.’ The day he found one to which he could add "the merest splash of my potent juice" - I really hope he’s talking about his Qi, or I've been reading a very different sort of book - he was so happy he nearly forgot to add unnecessary adjectives to his descriptions.

Neary, but not quite.

I studied my cauldron again. Even with me full-on concentrating on cycling, it was still sucking on down more Qi than I could comfortably produce. I remembered that both my armour and the mana stone earrings eventually reached the point where I couldn't add any more Qi to them. But this cauldron was drinking it in like a bottomless well, which, incidentally, was my nickname at my second job.

People can be cruel.

Putting the scrolls to the side, I concentrated on my cycling—not just letting my paint poodle around in the background but properly pushing and pulling it with my breathing—the way Merlin had kept moaning at me to try.

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It was weird to think how difficult I'd found this to be not that long ago. Perhaps the time loop had been good for something other than causing the complete collapse of my mental well-being?

In any event, my Qi was absolutely flying around my channels. I still had that slightly sticky spot near my liver, but with each pass, even that felt easier and easier. Moreover, that odd water feature at the centre of my core was noticeably fuller than before my kidnapping.

It wasn't quite to the brim yet, but I didn't think it would take much more Qi to go in there for it to get that way.

I needed someone to ask what would happen when it was complete.

I missed Merlin.

That thought pulled me out of my sense of calm and back into reality.

You're leaking.

Wiping my eyes, I stood up and stretched my back. "How long have I been cycling?"

Did you misunderstand my fucking job description? I'm a sword, not a fucking personal organiser. I measure time by the distance between kills.

Yep, I missed Merlin.

I left my cauldron to keep guzzling down all the excess Qi I was generating, hoping that at some stage enough would be enough, and I could test out what a fully kitted-out and Qi'd up Treasure of Britain could really do with some heart moss and spring water.

I suspected I wouldn't be producing ‘Common’ elixirs for long.

Poor. Inferior. Common. Uncommon. Rare. Epic. Flawless.

It seemed to me that it would be quite a journey before I could make something that would help me escape—or, at least, the ingredient I needed to make that happen.

Presumably, it would also be a similarly long journey to perfect that portion.

Anxiety bloomed in my stomach, but I pushed it down.

My entire first life had been one frantic search for the quick fix—for the thing—animal, mineral, or vegetable—that would make everything okay. That would soothe the pain—even for a minute. And a minute would be charitable for some of the lads from art school.

But that was the old me.

Sure, ‘new' me was basically the same fucked up person, but with magic. But I was beginning to realise that a whole new range of options were open to me that didn't involve the quickest possible solution.

I remembered one of my first conversations with Merlin about cultivating and how it was all about the quality, not the quality. He'd been so worried about how quickly I was burning through techniques and progression markers. He'd obviously sensed that, given a choice, I was all about the cheat code and not the journey.

The funny thing was that that wasn't me when I was painting. No matter what else was going down, I never rushed my art.

The last time I was evicted, I'd found myself carting around pictures and portraits I'd begun four or five years earlier. I’d not abandoned them- I kept going back to them again and again - but I recognised they deserved care and attention I didn't seem to afford much else.

Fuck me. I'd been some level of screwed up, hadn't I?

You're leaking again.

Smiling, I picked up the sword. "Yeah, don't worry about it."

I didn't say I was worrying about it, did I? I don't know how you fucking things work. Rhyddrech Hael actively seemed to seek out every opportunity he could to leak. But I'm coming to recognise that might not have been the most healthy approach in the world. I assume you have a finite amount of moisture you can expel. From memory, it was usually the fourth or fifth time that he'd just be firing air.

“Mate, can we make that the last Rhyddrech Harl anecdote for a bit? Not that I don't love them, but they leave me needing to take a bath, and if you haven't noticed, they're in short supply around here.”

"There's a shower in my cell.”

I froze and then slowly turned towards the door from which the voice had emanated.

"Hello? Is out there anyone? I was noting there's a shower in my cell. Well, not a shower. More leak in roof with water through it flowing it is. But happy to share if interested you are being."

The voice was unmistakably Scandinavian. It was like someone had taken the essence of all things from that part of the world, mashed them together with added herring, meatballs and difficult-to-assemble flat-pack furniture, and released the ensuing accent on the wild.

But deep and manly.

It was like having Barry White to speak Elvish.

"It's not a bath, I'm afraid. But needs must, as my dear mother always says."

I wasn't really sure how to react.

Other than Morgan, there'd been no sign that anyone was alive - or, more crucially, sane - in these cells.

But I hadn't tried them all. That would have taken forever. So, surely the law of averages had to dictate that someone else would be behind one of these doors, capable of aiding in an escape attempt.

"Also whatever cooking you are smells delicious. Not that I'm not grateful for all the mushrooms growing on my walls I have, but variety is good. Hello? Still there are you?”

"Yes, I'm here.”

"Glad to hear it. I was worried frightened you off I had with my silliness about mushrooms and baths and such like. Mother always says: "Shordigjordsson, you speak too much." But how else can you get to know new friends without all the talking?"

He rambled on for quite some time. There was something incredibly soothing about the musical rumble of his voice.

"Why are you in the cell?" After about half an hour, I realised if I didn't interrupt him, there would be no halt to the flow of his words.

"Ah, now there is a saga. It began..."

Fucking give us a precis. I'm rusting out here.

If the man was offended, it didn't show in his voice. "Certainly, brusque one. I landed with my crew after storm. There was . . . Sorry, my language skills are not what I would they were. Would you call it raping and pillaging? Good times. But more of the Saes - the Saxons - than we'd thought there were. I fought leader, but play fair he wouldn't. All the magic, you understand? Next thing I know, here I am. And - time passes - here you are."

"And your name's", I thought back, "Shordigjordsson?”

A laugh came from behind the door. "No, that's what my mother calls me. It means 'Loveable half-wit'. My actual name is -', and then he made a noise that was not unlike the ice falling from a faulty fridge ice dispenser.

"Okay, I have absolutely no chance of saying that. What did your shipmates call you?"

We then played a complicated game called "let's find ways to describe me that you can understand.”

I had just the best time.

Fuck's sake. Why can't we just call him 'annoying twat behind the door'. I could get behind that.

“Right. One last try. Can you translate any of those nicknames for me?"

There was silence. "Thin stick with spike on the end?" he asked hesitantly. Now we were getting somewhere. "Spear? Your mates call you spear?”

"No. Not really - It's the ones you use when on a horse. It is a joke, you see? Because too big I am to sit on a horse. They were a funny crew. Lots of japes. Always with the jokes."

My mind whirled momentarily, already seeing where this particular impending trainwreck was leading.

"A Lance? They called you Lance?"

"Yes. That's it. I was called Lance a lot."