"Dude, this sounds like some pretty dark shit.”

Look, even in your own time, my dear, you have examples of bodily fluids being collected to create health products: blood drives, plasma banks, even the essence of reproduction . . .

"You can't ever say the word 'sperm' can you?”

My dear, that's not really the point right now...

"Spermy, Spermy, Spermy, Sperm. Go on, say it."

What I am trying to say is that whilst, on the face of it, you may be right to note that there is something superficially distasteful about the idea of including a virgin's blood in an Elixir, it is not something that is as entirely insane as you are suggesting.

“Okay, so I'm not going to argue that with you, but . . . you know, virgin's blood?

Look, my dear, I'm not suggesting we snatch a baby from its mother's breast and slit its throat over the cauldron.

'Well, clearly!"

I'm sure a peasant woman will be too happy to sell us one. The first thing to learn in the alchemical trade is that children are a growth industry.

There was a significant pause.

Obviously, I’m joking.

“Really?”

Unless you’re up for it, of course.

“Merlin!"

So, we're drawing a line on infanticide. Good to know. It’s important that we establish where we all stand with such things. However, this does not solve the problem for us. It is vitally important that we can raise the concentration of you Qi, therefore we are going to have to plow onward. The recipe calls for about half a pint, which isn't so much in the grand scheme of things. There's no easy way to ask this politely, but are you still a virgin my dear?

If the power of laughter could have been harnessed into some sort of superweapon, I’m pretty confident we could have wiped the Saxons off the map during my response to that question.

"Mate, that horse has not only bolted; it's started its own little stables down the road and accessed funding to open a little chain of wayside cafes. It's not much, but it's keeping the foals well-fed and he’s happy he will have something to leave to his growing horsey family."

Quite. Sorry, I don't think I'm being clear. Since your resurrection, my dear, have you lain with a man. Or a woman? After all, it is not for me to judge.

The face of the most beautiful woodcutter in the world swan into my mind. There had been potential there, certainly. Of course. Drynwyn beheaded him rather smartly after we made eye-contact, so that limited things a touch. There’d been a couple of others who had aroused my interest since then, including, interestingly, Corys of Dehuebarch. I'd have to consider that later.

Always fancied being a princess.

"No, Big M. Since returning to this veil of tears, I have found myself in a somewhat colossal dry spell."

Okay. Well then, I think we have found our virgin.

*

It is surprisingly hard to gather half a pint of cultivator's blood.

For a start, my skin is mainly impervious to a little prick - oh the jokes, I am sparing you right now - so I had to spend a fairly traumatic ten minutes with a dagger slashing away at my wrists and squeezing.

Yes, in case you are wondering, this triggered any number of flashbacks. Let’s move right along.

Eventually, I had to go and find Lancelot to help me out.

"You want me to stab you?" If he found anything remotely troubling about the request, it didn't show.

"Yes, please," as he drew his sword with rather more of a flourish than I thought truly necessary, I backed away, "but just a little bit, mate. I just need to collect some of my blood for a spell."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Blood sacrifice,” he nodded approvingly. "My people big on this are they being. Most usual for prisoners to use? But, pretty-hair, your ways are strange and mysterious."

And with literally no further to-do at all, he stabbed me in the thigh.

"Fuck. Hang on! I don't have ... Fuck!" My femoral artery sprayed blood into the air for a good few seconds, before abruptly stopping and the wound healed up. I sighed, glared at the new Pollock-inspired artwork around my Tower and went to collect my cauldron and sat back down.

"Right, mate. I appreciate the enthusiasm, but that was a touch of premature exsanguination there. Let's take a breath. Maybe have a drink. There’s absolutely no rush. We've got all night."

It took four more efforts to collect enough blood for Merlin to be happy we could make the spell work. To be honest, after the second time, I began to suspect he was just enjoying me being stabbed.

"So, we have the blood. So what’s next, Big M?" I tried to keep the wince out of my voice. No matter how quickly you heal, it doesn't remove the pain of the injury.

Now, we start gently boiling your blood and adding those other materials you’ve gathered, finishing with half-an-inch of Erobes root.

I'd collected eight or nine other ridiculous things from the spacial storage on his shelves. It wasn't quite the whole ‘eye of newt’ and ‘toe of a frog’, but it certainly wasn't a million miles away from it.

When all this was added, I managed to coax Drynwyn to ratchet up the level—I’ll do my best, but my heart’s not really in it. I’m so sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me—and in no time, the dark red liquid changed it to a somewhat frothy, luminous pinky/purple foam.

It smelt and looked like nothing less than Calpol—eight years out-of-date Calpol.

"How much of this crap do I really need to drink, Big M”?

All of it, my dear.

Lancelot hung around after the stabbings—he really did not take social cues. Or even outright 'do you not have anywhere else to be?'—and looked down into the cauldron with interest. "And this will make you all berserk, yes?"

"No, mate. It's not that sort of potion. I need to . . ." I wasn't sure I could explain what I was doing in a way the barbarian could understand. He wasn't stupid but had an incredibly simple way of looking at the world that could be mistaken for it. "It's a training aid. It will make me stronger. In my magic."

He nodded affably. "Ah. Mother gave me such. When baby being. Make me strong."

That interested me. "Your mother was an alchemist?"

He laughed. "My mother is mad witch. Every day with the ‘drink this man's blood, make you tall’, ‘eat this one's liver, he has strong hands’ ‘swallow these eyes, see in the dark’." He thumped his hand to his chest. "Mother helped me be leader of our tribe. Even day since born with the potions. And the elixirs. And the body parts.”

Fuck me. I guess we were lucky the dude had turned out reasonably sane. Whenever he talked about his childhood. he sounded like he was one motel purchase away from being a full-on shower killer.

Tearing my mind away from the image of Lancelot in a wig and his mother’s dress, I looked down at the bubbling mixture in the cauldron. And, well, it wasn't going to get more appetising by looking at it.

I downed it in one.

Merlin had talked me through what to expect once the Erobus root got into my system, so I dropped Into my Artist's Studio to witness the effect. However, except for a growing feeling of intense nausea, I didn't see any notable changes to either my Qi or the way it moved around my channels.

From what I understood, this concoction was supposed to act like a giant diuretic, essentially sucking out at least two-thirds of the amount of Qi I had available whilst exponentially increasing the power in the amount that was left.

I had been looking forward to the show.

But no. Nothing

"Big M, this is all a bit anti-climatic. What's going on?"

I'm not sure, my dear. The effects of Erobus root should be almost instantaneous. Indeed, we've had to boil it down entirely due to its overwhelming potency. Bear with me for just a few moments.

I felt Merlin take hold of my Qi and direct it towards the ingredients around the cauldron. Although I was happy to have him back in my head, I found the moments when he took control of my Qi—even in the extremely limited way his spirit could access it —rather distasteful. It wasn't exactly painful, but neither was it entirely unlike being roofied and steered upstairs with a guiding hand.

Ah, I think I see the problem.

I snapped out of some pretty bleak memories and refocused on the current issue at hand.

"So, what do we do? More blood is it?"

Lancelot’s sword was in his hand in an admirable display of readiness that, in other circumstances, I felt I would be able to put to more fruitful use.

No. Well, at least not yours.

"How do you mean?"

My dear, there's no particularly delicate way to say this, so please do not take offence. It would be seen that your essential . . . non-virginess has managed to transmit across the barrier between the eras.

“I’m sorry?”

You may have abstained in this world thus far, but it seems a quality of your being that simply defies resetting has led to your lack of . . . purity being somewhat deeply imprinted on your soul.

There was a silence.

"Dude, that is some next-level Scarlet-Letter-Handmaid’s-Tale, slut shaming. You're saying I'm too much of used goods to get a do-over in my second life?"

To be clear, my dear, it's not me saying that. It's ...

"What, the gods of body count? The special shag investigation squad?"

No. Regardless of what the religious will have us believe, there is only one person who has the right to define the nature of our souls, and that's each of us. If anyone has decided you are not to be allowed to start afresh, as it were, I am afraid it's you.

“Well, fuck me.” Or don't. I think that’s kind of the issue here.

There really was not enough therapy in the world, was there? I was pondering this latest example of how truly screwed up I was when the big dude piped up again.

"You need the blood of a virgin, yes?"

I nodded at him mutely; I'd thought I was doing much better of late. It was somewhat disconcerting to find out my soul still found me deeply distasteful.

"Well, easy, that is”

And, with a swish, he opened the veins of his forearm