I'd known, intellectually, that the sight that would greet us at Isca Dumnoniorum was unlikely to be a good one. Merlin had gone all quiet the closer we'd come to our destination, and that hardly suggested he was expecting positive news.

So, with the Big M in an unusually contemplative mood, and with Drynwyn continuing to stew in its muted state, it was really the first time I'd had proper headspace to myself since I'd been portalled here.

I took the opportunity to drop in and out of my artist's studio as we walked, trying to smooth out some of the adjustments to my cycling technique that Merlin had 'suggested' before he went and got all maudlin on me.

As much as it hurt me to say, it seemed like he might have had a few points. Yes, things were working for me, but I was doing it all in a pretty cackhanded way. No one would disagree that my Qi was smoothly cycling around my body, but without all the cheating I'd done with the dragon essence, Merlin rewiring my channels on the fly, and now a shedload of mana stones, it was obvious that my technique was shambles.

My channels - post dragon - were Brazillian smooth, meaning there was simply no resistance for my paint as it flowed around. However, had there been even a touch of friction - and Merlin had indicated, even for experienced cultivators, it was customary for there to remain significant blockages for decades - the path of my Qi would have been, at best, sluggish.

I'd never, after that first time, really had to struggle to push my energy around me-as-Vitruvian-man, so I hadn't developed any good habits. The time spent training in the cave had made me a more effective cultivator than most other humans, but that was just the first step on a fucking mahusive journey.

Even with all the lucky breaks I’d received, I still wasn’t at a level where a giant man with a wild beard would show up at my door and whisk me away on his motorbike. That was pretty humbling.

Full disclosure, something very similar to that happened on my twentieth birthday. And I suppose it did lead to warts of a different type.

My state of being objectively quite shit in the grand scheme of things reminded me of when I absolutely nailed my first attempt at a still life in Mrs Morrison's Art GCSE class. She was so bowled over that a) anyone had actually stopped flicking paint at each other long enough to draw something and b) that my effort wasn't utterly rancid, that she'd given me a pass all year.

I still can't draw bananas for toffee.

There was a reason why people spent decades practising to get this cultivation lark just right, and just because I'd bumbled my way through it so far was no reason to ignore all the useful - if somewhat archly delivered - advice as to how I could improve.

I cannot tell you what a triumphal moment of self-growth admitting that is for me. I kind of felt it should have been rewarded with some sort of celebratory *ding from whatever passed for a System in this version of the multi-verse.

That my only acknowledgement was a gull shitting on my head kind of felt a little on the nose ...

Checking Merlin wasn't paying too much attention, I did a quick [Personal Space Invader] to force the sticky whiteness out of my hair (and that's not the first time I've ever thought that sentence, I'm afraid).

Newly birdshit free, I continued wombling on my way, fundamentally aware that my life was the equivalent of blasting around Arthurian England in a snazzy, souped-up Ferrari with the engine of a Reliant Robin under the bonnet.

If my disastrous effort in following the instructions of the looted scrolls had taught me anything, it was that there were significant gaps in my education. I didn't know what I didn't know. This made me really vulnerable to the kind of misjudgements that were pretty much my calling card. Kind of like trying to watch The Last Jedi without having seen any of the others and thus being denied the opportunity to build up decades' worth of resentment and unrealistic expectations.

Thus, pressing cleaning ritual moments aside, I took advantage of the unusual silence to work on my breathing and get my mind into the right state to reflect on what I was doing.

So, I was in a decent frame of mind when, several hours later, we crested a hill and looked down on Hell.

It won't surprise you to know that I'm a big John Martin fan. His paintings fully embody all those themes of doom and despair, which - shock horror - had been very much my thing once upon a time. If you've never seen his work, there's one particular one, Pandemonium, which he based on the bit in 'Paradise Lost' when Satan is talking to the devils outside the demonic palace they'd just constructed. As you can imagine, it's pretty heavy on the fire and brimstone and just bodes.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Looking down at the remains of Isca Dumnoniorum, I couldn't help but feel Martin had slackened off a little in his depiction of sparse, gothic horror.

"What could have done this?"

Me.

Merlin did not need a face for me to read his expression.

I walked down the hill, getting as close to the smoking ruin as the heat would allow. That I needed to replace substantial energy in my Qi armour to get even this close should tell you all you need to know. I guess if you looked hard enough, you could still make out the lines where the stone walls used to be. But you'd have needed to be really committed to the effort. And comfortable no longer having eyebrows.

What I'm saying is that what was left of the settlement looked like a blancmange to which someone had taken a blowtorch.

That's it. That's the simile.

I don't have much else to say about it all.

It was stark as fuck.

"You've done things like this?"

I have. Many times.

"Does that mean the Saxons have someone as strong as you?

No. This was the work of thirty or forty cultivators working in concert. They formed a ring outside the town and combined their Qi in a ritual I don't think I recognise. And even then, I can feel ... someone adding significant power from the outside. This cost those present almost all of their accumulated reserves and then some. I can feel that many of them did not survive the casting.

"So why do it - if it's cost them so much?"

They are making a point, my dear. When you are waggling your dick in the air, you don't worry about some of the hairs you pull out. I'm sorry. That was a horrible metaphor.

I looked at the wasteland of ash. "All of this was just to make a point?"

Yes. It's a surprisingly effective tactic. If I was Uther, I'd be seriously considering whether to summer in Frankia this year.

"Do you think anyone made it out alive?"

I honestly don't see how.

I had to agree. Isca was a fiery tomb.

We stood looking at the smouldering rock for some time. It didn't feel there was much else to talk about.

Then, with a strange tone in his voice, Merlin suddenly became chatty. This is going to be an odd question, but in your own time period, did you ever visit Isca Dumnoniorum?

I pulled a face. "Mate, I don't think what's left of this place is going to be standing next week, let alone in fifteen hundred years' time ..."

Exactly. I'm testing out a theory I dislike very much, indeed.

I rolled my eyes and was about to answer in the negative, but then a memory stirred.

I could see myself, first as a teenager and then as a young adult ten years later, walking the stone walls of Exeter. I remember being told that they had existed since the Roman times. For such a little shit, I had been quite taken by the sense of timelessness that demonstrated. Certainly enough to bring a boyfriend back in tow years later.

But even as I remembered it, the memory sparked, flared and became entirely indistinct. It was still there if I thought hard enough about it, but more like it was a dream I was half-remembering. Certainly, it wasn't as firm a memory as it was before.

"I think so. But ... it's weird. It's like it didn't really happen. If I concentrate too much on it, it fades out."

Shit. It is as I feared.

"What?"

This shouldn't have happened.

I didn't have to ask him what 'this' was.

There shouldn't be any Saxon wizards, and there shouldn't be enough Qi available for them to cast this spell. Isca Dumnoniorum should still be stood in your own time. Someone is changing history.

"So what changed?"

I died.

"Help me out, Big M. How does you dying lead to the Great Fire of Exeter?"

At my tier level . . .

He paused to give me the chance to add “at Snape” but in an heroic act of self-development, I restrained myself (seriously, System. Where is my *ding?).

At my tier level, every time I breathed, I pulled in as much Qi as British Isles could easily maintain. As a general rule, I tried not to drink so deeply as to destroy all the magical flora or fauna, but the drain was still significant enough that no other cultivators could thrive. I paused my own progress a few times over the years to try to train apprentices but, well, they were all essentially useless, and I became bored.

"So you fed them to Vortigern's dragon."

So I fed them to Vortigern's dragon. Merlin agreed.

"But with you dead, the Qi is available, and, what, the Saxons have grabbed it?"

Yes, but that's not the most pressing question.

"Which is?"

I'm not convinced Arthur knows I am dead yet. So how have the Saxons managed to steal a march with their cultivating?

"Good point, well made."

Of course, I'm Merlin. But now, here's the big question, and it's based on some big assumptions, but we shall accept each of them for now. Let's assume whoever is training the Saxons knew the exact moment I died. Thus, therefore, let's assume they had something to do with it. And let's not even get into what achieving such a thing would need. If we take all that to be accurate, I think we can assume it's not just the future of the walls of Isca Dumnoniorum they are looking change."

Merlin was silent for a few seconds, I didn't like to interrupt him. Describe your sister to me, my dear.

I opened my mouth . . . and nothing came out. I could see her, but I also couldn’t. There was an absolute place she had in the universe, and there was also an aura around her sucking her away.

And the worse thing was, I couldn’t even feel panic about it. Because what was a panicking about? That someone who had never existed, did not exist?

Fuck.

“Merlin, mate?”

Yes, my dear?

“We need to find who is doing this and end them.”

For once, my dear, we are in complete agreement.