It was on the afternoon of the second day of our little expedition that I stumbled across the first of our stones.
Well, the first thirty of the fuckers, anyway. I don’t know why, but the vision I had of Stonehenge in my mind was on a much less dramatic scale than the one Merlin was advocating for.
“Are you sure about this, mate? I’m fairly certain I’ve been fucked in this field, and there’s no way there were as many stones in it as you describe. I’d have remembered. There wasn’t much else to occupy my attention . . .”
Well, I cannot comment on your own personal experience, my dear. But, yes, we will need all thirty of the Sarsen stones down there. Over the millennia, I suspect what you think of as ‘Stonehenge’ has been reduced somewhat by the passage of time. However, to reconstruct the original Meridian Stone configuration, we will need all one hundred and sixty-three stones, I am afraid.
“Fuck. This is going to be even more of a mission than I’d thought. Oh, and just to check, by Sarsen stones, I’m presuming you're meaning those giant fucking boulders? Not, by any chance, much smaller stones, pocket-sized that I’m not seeing?”
Indeed. We will need all of the ones you can see to begin rebuilding the Outer Circle.
“And you’re talking about those four-metre-tall ones?”
For the last time, my dear, yes! We will need to relocate them to the necessary position on Salisbury Plain as a starting point for our endeavour. And then, of course, we will need to locate the lintel stones that are to be laid across the top of them.
“Fucking hell. Playing an epic game of ‘Find the Giant Rocks in the middle of Wiltshire’ is not how I expected being a Wizard to shake out.”
It is always best to prepare for the unexpected where matters of Qi are involved, my dear.
“So I’m learning, Big M. So I’m learning. Oh, and I do I take it that all those freaky-looking dudes in the bearskins, the woad and the skull necklaces dancing around them like they are at a rave are likely to have a problem with me popping down there to ask if I can borrow their stones for a bit?”
I’m afraid I would assume so.
I rolled over onto my back and stared up at the clear blue sky above us. After some truly shitty weather, today really was a quite lovely March morning. I doubted it would be long before Arthur would want to get his spears out and about in Saxon territory.
If I was going to do this, it needed to be soon. Regardless of everything else going on, I needed to get cracking on the whole ‘wiping out the enemy cultivators’ thing before shit got real.
Sensing I was likely to make more progress on my own, I’d left Sir Ector and his gang back at base camp and come scouting alone. Mostly because I needed a break from them, but also because I had not expected to need any backup.
I was getting pretty good at using my Map function to identify cultivators and, in the absence of any colourful dots to worry me, I’d figured there were going to be few problems Drynwyn and I wouldn’t be able to handle alone.
Don’t flatter yourself. We all know who is going to be doing the fucking heavy lifting here.
To be honest, I actually didn’t think I’d be needing it to bring the fiery death. As far as I figured things, even the thirty or forty dudes living their best lives down there weren’t going to be enough to put a dent in my day.
Mind you, life would go an awful lot easier if they didn’t want to make an issue of me nicking their rocks. It really was a lovely morning, and I really didn’t fancy getting blood in my hair.
“Any ideas, Big M? I’m looking for something that doesn’t involve genocide, if possible?”
Ah, well. I’m afraid Sir Ector might have jumped the gun on that one.
“What do you mean? Oh, fuck a duck!”
I spun around to see Sir Ector appear on the opposite side of the ridge from me. He raised his spear in the air, whooped, and then led his – for want of a better word – ‘warband’ in an entirely resistible charge down the hill.
Which is when things all started to go rather wrong.
Firstly, the response of the dancing guys was not at all what I expected. I’d assumed – because of where we were in the world – these were some sort of off-brand Saxons. And, in my increasingly encyclopaedic experience of Saxon warfare, their typical response to an oncoming assault would be to pick up the nearest axe, spear, or passing small child, scream out a belligerent challenge, and race forward to meet it.
That was pretty much their signature style.
Sure, Aurelius Ambrosius had enforced a thin veneer of tactical awareness on the top but, when the battlefield chips were down, CHARGE! was pretty much an instinctive, ingrained response.
These dudes, though, played against type.
As Sir Ector and his men approached them, these fuckers didn’t as much as budge. They just stood there, swaying slightly in the breeze, as if hearing a rhythm only they could perceive.
“I don’t think I like this, Big M . . .”
Sir Ector, Cai, Roderic and all the rest tore down the hillside with all the raw energy of battle-hardened warriors certain of victory. I mean, these guys are absolutely the Clampits, but you couldn’t hang around Lancelot and Bors without picking up at least some basic tips. They had the high ground, the element of surprise and their opposition hadn’t even armed themselves yet.
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This one was over.
Surely?
Their spears glinted in the morning air, their boots crunched on the dewy grass, and there was still no answering movement from the men they were descending upon in a fury.
Just eerie silence.
My dear, I’m not sure what is happening, but I truly do not like what I’m seeing.
I stood, packing as much Qi into my hands as I could. I didn’t want to start flinging the purple death if I didn’t have to, but I was equally creeped out by the behaviour of the waiting Saxons.
And then shit got real.
In one terrible synchronised motion, the men in the fur pelts knelt. But no . . . It wasn’t a gesture in order to meet the charge of Ector’s men. They weren’t bracing their shields for impact. They hadn’t even picked any weapons up! The Saxons were pressing their hands deep into the wet earth, fingers splayed like roots digging into the soil.
And then they started to sing.
Okay, singing might be overselling it.
They gave a low, guttural chant which hummed through the air, not loud enough for me to understand what they were saying but powerful enough for me to feel it in my bones.
“What are they doing!”
I have no idea, my dear. But they are not touching Qi as far as I can tell . . .
The ground beneath Sir Ector’s spearmen suddenly shuddered, rippling as though something monstrous stirred beneath it.
"What the—?" Ector barely had time to curse before the land itself betrayed him.
With a violent crack, the earth splintered apart. Black tendrils of what looked like roots, only thicker, more alive, shot upward from the ground, wrapping around legs and torsos with terrifying speed. Men were ripped from their feet, their battle cries turning into screams. Spears clattered to the ground as the roots dragged the soldiers down, snapping bones like dry twigs.
Ector, his spear raised mid-strike, was yanked backward so fast it looked like the wind itself had decided to take him. The roots crushed him in midair with a sickening crunch, his body hitting the ground limp, his armour shattering around him like broken pottery.
The other spearmen screamed defiance but not a single one made it to the bottom of the hill.
Those who weren’t torn apart by the roots were flung bodily into the air and then smashed down against the Sarsen stones as if by some invisible giant hand. Blood sprayed against the massive chunks of sandstone, painting them red.
"Wizard! Help us!" I heard Ector’s voice, ragged and broken, for one brief moment before a tendril wrapped around his throat. The life was choked out of him with a brutal finality.
That chicken gag is looking in pretty fucking bad taste right now, right?
I stood frozen, bile rising in my throat as the Saxons - no, you know what, I don’t think these things are actually human - turned, as one, to look at me.
Not a single one of them had moved to actually fight properly. No blades. No arrows. No weapons. They had called upon something . . . horrible. Something that defied what little I thought I understood about magic.
Ah. Now, I don’t want to alarm you, but you may want to consider falling back . . .
No shit, Sherlock.
I let the Qi bleed from my hands and pushed everything I had into my legs, starting to back away. But what I saw of their faces froze me anew.
Through the blood, through the chaos, through the ominous fucking miasma of darkness that had fallen around the standing stones, I could see that their eyes were wholly pitch black. No whites, no irises. Just endless voids locked on me, empty and cold. There was no anger, no hatred, no satisfaction in their gaze. Only an unsettling, impassive calm.
Yes. I do rather think that discretion would be the better part of valour here, my dear. Live to fight another day and all that . . .
My legs refused to move at first, every inch of my body screaming in terror.
I fumbled for my Qi, reaching for the power inside me, needing something to make sense of this madness. Something to fight back against whatever the hell these things were and the power they commanded. But before I could fully channel it, the ground shifted again, more violently this time. The tendrils that had erupted into the sky to massacre Sir Ector’s men shifted direction, turning toward me like snakes slithering across the earth.
Hunting.
The figures began to hum louder, a haunting melody that brought the goosebumps out on my skin. This wasn’t just an attack—it was a curse, an invocation of something foul.
I didn’t wait to find out anymore about it than that.
With a surge of exploded
As I moved, I felt the weight of their black eyes following me, unhurried, watching my escape with the patience of remorseless predators.
Look, you’ve all seen that racer snake and marine iguana video, right? Right now, I am one with the iguana and the iguana is one with me.
I channelled everything I had, pulling every scrap of energy I could pull from my Artist’s Studio. The world blurred as I ran—no, fled—up the hill, the screams of Sir Ector’s men still echoing in my ears. I dared a glance behind me.
The battlefield was a slaughterhouse, spears abandoned in the churned mud, bodies strewn like broken dolls. What remained of the warband was being pulled into the earth, buried alive by those cursed roots, swallowed by the land as though it had never known them.
And still the fur-clad figures stood, unmoving, their chant rising, filling the air, more resonant now, as if ensuring I could hear every last syllable.
I wasn’t going to make it, was I?
The realisation hit me like a certain truck that sent me back to the Dark Age. My Qi was fast burning out. I could feel exhaustion settling in, the edges of my vision was darkening. It was so long since I’d had to burn myself out in this way. Fuck, I hadn’t even brought any of my mana stone jewellery with me. Fucking overconfidence!
Not for nothing, but the day Rhyddrech Hael died, he left most of his better charms at home. Properly really fucking missed them at the end.
The ground trembled again, and I pushed even harder, ignoring the pain, ignoring the exhaustion. The world around me shrank to just my heartbeat and the desperate, uneven pounding of my feet.
Just keep running, my dear. Just keep running. Not much further.
Another ripple through the earth—closer this time. I swerved, instinct guiding me as a root erupted from the ground where I’d been a second earlier. It missed by inches, but more were coming.
The top of the ridge was in sight. If I could just reach it…
With one last desperate surge of Qi-empowered legs, I launched myself forward, landing in a half-roll on the crest of the hill. I tumbled down the other side, sliding in the mud, until I finally crashed into the ground, breathless, shaking, and with more than a couple of broken bones.
Silence.
A stillness only broken by my ragged breaths and the sound of my pulse pounding in my ears.
From where I lay, I could make out the top of the hill where, at the very summit, the fur-clad figures stood watching. How had they gotten there so fast? But they were not advancing. They were not chasing me. Just... watching.
The realisation sank in: they were letting me go.
A dull ache settled into my stomach. Whoever—whatever—they were, they’d wiped out a British warband – a shitty one, for sure, but still – and didn’t see any need to finish the job on the only British wizard.
Who the fuck were these guys?