"I'm going to raise the prospect of a bridge again."

We were sitting under the shadow of a very dead Kraken. Drynwyn had done the honours on the remains of Burford and Volka, but no matter what we tried, it didn't appear a cremation was on the cards for the giant . . . whatever the fuck this thing was.

At least now that it was dead, I didn't feel like I was going to go mad every time I looked at it.

"Will you shut up about a fucking bridge!" Mark's temper had not improved since losing his bodyguard.

"Give me a better idea," I spat back. "We can't fight another two of these things!"

And that was true. We were a mess. For whatever reason, the wounds these fucking things inflicted didn't heal in the usual way. I was used to almost wiping the slate clean with my elixirs, so their inability to make it all okay was irritating. Worse than that, it seemed wasn't a free do-over.

What were you expecting, my dear? There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Honestly, that was almost exactly what I thought being a cultivator was. Seeing a cost to my new healing spell was a bit of a disappointment. The upshot was that Lancelot had lost a shedload of weight and looked like absolute shit.

Your spell is the catalyst for the subject's own resources to come into play. You speed up the process, for sure. However, the cost of healing must be paid. And Lancelot was wholly battered during that battle.

He hadn't been the only one.

Arthur stood and winced as he put the weight on a knee twice the size it should have been. "There is no conceivable way the five of us can survive anything like that again."

"So, the bridge?" I asked, hopefully.

The chorus of disapproval was unnecessarily loud and long, considering I was basically the human equivalent of an ICU unit at this point. I felt they could have let me down a little more gently.

Owain was nursing a deep gash that ran the length of his chest that, no matter what I tried, was proving resistant to healing. I'd had to stitch it up the old-fashioned way, and mamma did not raise no seamstress. "Do we need to discuss whether our quest has foundered?" he asked quietly.

"No," Arthur's voice was firm. "Should Gwent of Gwynedd withdraw, there will be no hard feelings. My party will remain to claim Caeldfwch."

"Then you will die," Mark had no bothered standing. I couldn't help but notice he was in the best shape of any of us. All that padding, I assumed.

Lancelot cleared his throat. Man, he looked awful. His hair was lank and greasy, his cheeks were hollow and that indefatigable glow that surrounded him had vanished. He looked like nothing more than a smack addict who was in terminal decline. "My people," his chest was racked with coughs. I'd given him Melehan's Curing Rock to hold, but it didn't seem to be helping. That stone had helped bring Arthur back from Crispy City, what the fuck could be going on here for Lancelot to have it and still be in such a state?

The Kraken, my dear. As I said, I would have hesitated fighting one in my prime. Their attacks are not just physical. They inflict wounds on the soul.

Fuck me. And there were still two of them between us and the sword.

Lancelot had got his breath back. "My people raiders are. We know about boats. Canoes especially." He looked at me. "With help, I could guide making."

There was a general murmur of approval.

"Oh, sure. A bridge would be beyond our engineering capabilities. But a few boats, no worries. I think you guys just don't like it when a girl takes the initiative."

"Morgan?"

"Yes, my king?"

"Shut the fuck up."

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*

It turned out that boat building wasn't an absolutely terrible idea. We were able to make use of the Kraken's rotting carcass to supplement any number of materials that Lancelot needed to direct the mocking up of a three-person canoe.

Of course, Muggins here was needed to do most of the work, which, suffering as I was from fairly substantial Qi exhaustion, was hardly a bowl of cherries and a slap on the arse from Di Caprio.

I basically poured out anything I had in the way of Qi to bring down the trees, turning them into serviceable shapes for Lancelot, Arthur and Owain to undertake some manual carpentry. Mark, noticeably, seemed to be doing much less.

I balanced out forestry with meditation, but I wasn't moving things on with anything like the sort of pace I wanted to. It was two full days before two serviceable-looking crafts were made. I mean, we only had Lancelot's word for it that he knew what he was talking about, but as my bridge remained off the table and there wasn't any of us up for a scrap, I wasn't against giving this a shot.

We then started to play a game called 'Who doesn't want to share a boat with Mark?'"

"Look," Owain said, "me and him are the heaviest. You've got to have us in different boats."

This was a fair comment. It would have been an awful lot of work to simply send one of our ships to the bottom of the lake.

"That is fine, being. Arthur and I will go with Mark; Owain will go with Morgan."

"I'm not having that fucking lunatic anywhere near me. He killed a bunch of my men."

Arthur glanced at Mark. "Oh, come on! You attacked him first. In the middle of a battle!"

"I have spoken." And the fat fuck crossed his arms and closed his eyes.

"Okay. How about Lancelot, Morgan and Owain? And I'll share with Mark?"

"No," it was Lancelot's turn to be belligerent. "He's not trustworthy. Alone with him, I will not leave you." Over the last day, the barbarian had begun to recover some of his vigour. He was still a long way from his Thor-best, but it was reassuring he was looking less like a walking skeleton.

"Boys, this is pathetic. Look, I'll go with Mark." Nothing like taking one for the team, was there?

"Can you tell where the Kraken are, Morgan?"

I shook my head at Arthur. "If you're wanting to use me as mobile radar, you'll need to give me at least another day. I'm fucking wrung out."

And that wasn't the half of it.

This was the longest I'd tried to operate in the Dark Ages without a fairly decent amount of Qi swishing through my channels. The lines connecting up all my hot spots - meridians, my dear. You're not a baby cultivator anymore - were looking pretty red and crusted again.

The last time something like this had happened, I'd been able to smooth them out again with a few hours of focused cycling. I worried that now I'd advanced, this level of damage would need a lot more effort to return things to normal.

"How long do you think you'll need?" Arthur's voice was just impatient enough to rub me up the wrong way.

"I don't know, mate. I'm not asking for a few minutes so I can reapply my fucking make-up. I've been doing the job of DPS, Healer and crafter for this party for the last few days and I'm fucking at the limit. If you want to kick off cruising over the Lake of Unspeakable Horror, feel free. But I won't have any goodies to bring to the party, and, as far as I can tell, I'm the only thing separating us from certain death. So, do the fuck what you want, but a 'thank you' every now and again would be nice!"

There was an awkward pause.

You know, sometimes, you sound like a very whiny bitch, my dear.

*

By general consent, we took the night off.

I found that mixing cycling from within my Artist's Studio with real-time exercise was the most efficient way to get myself fighting fit. There seemed to be a hard limit to how much Qi I could regenerate when time was paused, but if I came out and spent a good hour or so in the real world, I was able to click back in and start again.

It's only because you are not entirely operating at peak efficiency, Merlin explained. You should not be able to cycle for anything more than mindfulness when you are here: you are still not automatically absorbing the ambient Qi when you drop in. But that will come in time.

I'd been focusing on using my purple paint to repair the damage my overuse of Qi had caused. As long as I kept my mind entirely clear, each cycle of paint around my body reduced the inflammation by a tiny amount. It was like rubbing the thinnest layer of balm over sunburned skin.

By the time the rest of the party awoke in the morning, I was feeling less like a bear with a sore head and more up for another go at crossing the lake. Interestingly, the others seemed to be avoiding me.

It was Lancelot who girded his loins to risk my further displeasure.

"Feeling well, pretty hair?" He tossed me back Melehan's rock.

"Getting there, thank you. So, what's the plan?"

"We want to try crossing the lake," Arthur - now Lancelot had tested the water, was walking over to me. "But we need you to track the Krakens for us."

"And was there a magic word?"

Arthur started back at me. "I don't know. You're the wizard. Shouldn't you know the word to use?"

"I mean, did you want to say 'please'?"

"I'm not sure you quite understand the King/Wizard dynamic at play here." Nevertheless, at Owain's discrete cough, he took a deep breath and plastered on a smile. "Morgan, I would be very grateful if you could, please, feel up to keeping an eye on the devastatingly destructive monsters that are likely to come and try to eat us the moment we step onto the lake. Such a huge favour would be peachy. Please."

"You only had to ask, boss. Let's rock and roll."