"Big M."

Yes, my dear?

"You're being more than usually mumbly."

Mumbly, my dear?

"Yes. Mumbly. Muttering and whispering like you're trying to solve a crossword under your breath. Which, considering you don’t have breath anymore, makes it more like you're holding a private conversation just a little too quietly for me to hear. And, as you are literally a voice in my head, that is uncomfortably close to experiencing a polite and well-mannered psychotic break. So if you have something to say, say it.”

We’d been hopping between available Fast Travel points for the last hour, draining what was left of my Qi reserves with each jump. After the Nemain had wrung me dry, we’d been forced into a meditation break—one which, in my case, involved less transcendental enlightenment and more sitting on a rock and trying to find my chill. Apparently, we weren’t a million miles away from where Birmingham would be in a thousand years or so, which was a fun fact I was doing my best not to think about too hard as the sheer weirdness made my head swim.

There's just quite a lot of dangerous and quickly moving parts in play right now, my dear. I'm trying to—what’s the phrase?—get my geese in a row before discussing it with you.

"Ducks," I corrected. "You get ducks in a row. Geese are evil bastards that will slit your throat if you so much as look at them."

Really? I had thought geese to be somewhat dignified creatures. Graceful, even.

"Fuck no! Geese are the apex wankers of bird fuckery. You ever made the mistake of locking eyes with one? Pure evil. They’re always just one moment away from a murder attempt. Could be immediate. Could be a year from now. But when they come for you, it's swift, brutal, and deeply personal. Compared to that, ducks are a piece of piss."

Really?

"A duck will ruin your plans, steal your lunch, and then have the audacity to look at you like you’re the problem. They’re agents of anarchy, whereas geese are stone-cold assassins."

It sounds like you’ve put a rather unusual amount of time into considering this, my dear.

“Lot of time spent on park benches, Big M. You either get busy living or get busy dying.”

So, if I wished to establish some sense of order, I would align myself with ducks. But if I wished to sow terror, I would deploy geese. That does seem like a significant distinction. Perhaps I should be getting my ducks in a row after all.

"Probably for the best."

A beat of silence. Then—

"So, what is it you're really worried about, Big M?"

There was a pause. Give me just another few moments, my dear.

Fine. He’d talk when he was ready.

I went back to cycling my Qi. Since becoming a Harry, this was actually one of the nicer ways I could spend my time. Which is a weird thing to admit about a process that, when push comes to shove, basically involves me manually keeping my life force from stagnating, but here we are.

As the Big M continued to ponder the organisation of his poultry, I settled into the rhythm of it, picturing my body the way I always did—arms and legs outstretched like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, except mine was less Renaissance ideal and more ‘police sketch of an unidentified corpse’. My Qi, deep violet and thick as fresh paint, seeped through me in slow, deliberate strokes. The movement of all that energy was second nature now, as familiar as muscle memory.

It was strange, really.

In all my years of desperate, half-baked attempts at self-improvement, I’d never imagined this sort of quiet contemplation was what I’d needed. I’d tried therapy, yoga, meditation, SSRIs, self-help books, dubious life-coach podcasts, and everything – and I mean everything - various undesirables had smuggled away under their trenchcoats. Funnily enough, the answer to the meaning of life wasn’t any of those.

It was apparently ‘move your soul into the body of a sixth-century warrior-child and learn to manually circulate mystical energy like you’re your own human hamster wheel.’

Obvious, in hindsight. I kick myself for not realising earlier.

I started at the crown of my head, letting the colour trickle down through my channels, spiralling through my spine, sinking into every muscle and joint. It was… nice. It was soothing. A truly, objectively good sensation. Had there ever been a time in my real life where I’d felt so at one in my own body?

Doubt it.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Before the whole head-plant-into-a-moving-lorry incident, my body had never really felt like a home. More like a battered rental you move into because it’s the only thing you can afford, even though the last tenant clearly died in there and no one bothered to tell the landlord. The fridge never quite closes properly, the hot water runs brown for the first five minutes, and there's a smell—something between mildew and rotting corpse—that no amount of open windows or cheap scented candles can shift.

And sure, you try to fix it up. You slap a fresh coat of paint on the walls, buy a plant that withers instantly from second-hand horror, maybe even get some throw pillows to make it look like someone who gives a shit lives there. But no matter what you do, no matter how hard you scrub, the place still reeks.

There’s a thing Mummy Dearest used to say when she, eventually, came back to us after her latest effort to ‘find herself.’

“My body is a temple.”

Well, sure, mum. Your body was very much a temple where the holy wine flowed a little too freely, the priestesses were suspiciously friendly towards anyone with a dick, and there was a back room where things happened that would make even Dionysus go, “Steady on, mate.”

Me, on the other hand? Well, if my body was a temple then it was a place where you’d probably catch something if you knelt to pray.

Thus, being in this new body—this strange, fresh, functional body—was somewhat of a revelation. For the first time, it wasn’t some rundown squat I was desperately trying to escape. My Qi moved through me, filling up every hollow space, every battered corner, smoothing over the cracks like warm resin, and for once, I fit.

It was a deeply disconcerting experience.

Because if my body wasn’t a disaster zone anymore, if I didn’t have the constant background radiation of misery humming through my bones, then what excuse did I have for still being me?

The violet seeped through me, wrapping around every nerve, every bone, every cell, and I could feel myself becoming something denser, something more substantial.

It was a comfort.

Which meant something terrible was definitely about to happen.

Okay, I think I have this sorted in my head now, my dear. If you have a moment to talk?

Boom. Right on time.

“Lay it on me, Big M.”

To prepare myself for whatever shitty nightmare was about to be unleashed, I leaned back, stretching out on the damp grass, and looked over the rolling hills that would become Birmingham. Proto-Birmingham. Pre-Birmingham. Back before the smog, the factories and the endless grey sprawl of warehouses and roads.

Before traffic jams and roundabouts and Snobs.

Right now, the land was wild, untouched, and obscenely green. A lush, sprawling stretch of hills that tumbled over each other like sleeping giants, all soft slopes and deep hollows. Everywhere I looked was a carpet of sixth-century wildflowers which would be, in short order, systematically murdered in the name of progress.

Trees dotted the landscape, great hulking things with thick, gnarled roots gripping the soil like they knew what was coming. Enjoy it while you can, lads. In a few centuries, you’ll be charcoal and kindling.

Birds wheeled lazily overhead, utterly unbothered by my presence, because they had no generational memory of teenagers chucking chips at them outside a Greggs.

It all felt weirdly personal, as if nature was going out of its way to rub my face in the fact that, at some point, humanity collectively looked at this and thought, You know what would improve this? A fuckload of concrete.

… which greatly concerns me.

“Sorry, Big M. I was miles away. Lay it on me again.”

I’m not sure you are taking this as seriously as you should be, my dear.

“Oh, I am. I’m all about the seriousness. Look, this is my serious face.” I frowned and placed my chin in my cupped hands.

There was a silence.

“Seriously, are you sulking right now?”

Not at all, my dear. I am merely girding my loins for another attempt at highlighting the very real problem that I have identified. It would be good if you tried to pay attention.

Rhyddrech Hael girded his loins once. Didn’t get a whole lot fucking done for the rest of the day.

***

To spare you the next hour or so of question and answer, I’m going to summarise.

It turns out that in the time I’d spent bouncing us hither and tither up the Qi equivalent of the M1, Merlin had been quietly losing his metaphysical shit over something I’d seen. Specifically, the image that had flashed through my mind when I was talking to the Nemain—the sweeping, sorrow-drenched vision of The Death of King Arthur by James Archer.

Apparently, Merlin disagreed that was what the picture should have looked like.

The way you see it in your mind, my dear, is not how that painting looks.

"Maybe we’re thinking of different paintings?”

That’s just the key problem, my dear. I truly don't think we are.

There was something in his voice that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. "Okay," I said, cautious now. "How do you remember it?"

In my memory of the painting, Arthur is surrounded by women. Not knights. And I’m there, standing on the shore as he awaits the boat to take him to Avalon.

"Well, that’s obviously not the same painting. It’s not like there’s a shortage of pictures about King Arthur’s death, is there?”

That is what concerns me, my dear. Because I have been trying to look forward into the future and, while I can only grab the smallest of peeks, it does look like the painting I remember is much more like the one you describe.

“This is a really long-winded way of you saying I’m right, Big M. I know men have this fragile ego thing going on, but just a quick ‘my bad’ is really all this situation needs.”

But you see, I do not think I am wrong. I believe something has happened to change it.

"For fuck’s sake!" I said. "So my two choices here are that you are either utterly incapable of conceiving of a world in which I am right and you are wrong, or you're saying we're in Marty McFly with a polaroid territory again? I fucking hate timey-wimey bullshit."

And that is an attitude that does you credit, my dear. But I am afraid I can think of no other explanation. My memory of this painting is not wrong. Something has altered. Something fundamental.

"Any ideas?"

Merlin exhaled in that purely theatrical way he did when he wanted me to know he was thinking Very Serious Thoughts.

Let’s try out a theory I’m having here, my dear. Tell me what you know about King Lot.