With quite a lot of bad grace and a mood that could curdle milk, I trudged back up the hill, every step crunching against the frost-bitten grass of Salisbury Plain.

My feet felt like lead, my joints ached in that special way that only Qi depletion and being repeatedly thrown into the dirt could manage. More than that, though, I was pretty sure I had twigs in my hair.

Cresting the top of the hill, I was able to look back down to where the Meridian Stones pressed up against the bruised sky. This was where Sir Ector and his men had been senselessly slaughtered a few minutes before, and, right now, they were absolutely giving off the vibe that if I so much as breathed wrong, something equally unpleasant would happen to me.

Typical. Even the landscape was fucking on my case now.

And then, of course, there were the Nemain.

They had returned to stand in a perfect, eerie semicircle, swathed in fur and silence.

But mostly silence.

Their expressions—or rather, their complete lack of them—locked onto where I was stood with all the grave intensity of an archaeologist discovering a plague pit.

But these dudes didn’t shift at all. They didn’t twitch. They didn’t so much as shuffle their feet. It was like someone had pressed pause on the universe.

It may be helpful, my dear, if you did not think of the Nemain as ‘these dudes’. They are only presenting in this form because it makes sense to you. They could quite as easily have chosen to be in the form of a dragon, a burning bush or –

“You’re telling me I could be looking at a naked Johnny Depp right now, and instead they went with for a bunch of hairy druids? The Nemain so do not get me.”

Quite, my dear. You know what, in retrospect, perhaps we should begin this negotiations after a little more discussion of our plan of action. . .

“Fuck that,” I said. “I didn’t climb all the way up here to go back down again. The last thing I need right now is to be Grand Old Duke of Yorking. As my therapist will tell you, when I’m up, I’m up. Let’s get this over with. Oi! You lot!”

If the Nemain heard me, they didn’t show any sign of it. Nothing. Not even a rustle of fur loincloth in the wind.

“My invisible wizard mentor thinks you guys want to have a chat. He reckons our recent . . . . tussle was more a case of cultural misunderstanding than a deliberate intention for a slaughter. I’m not sure Sir Ector and his men would appreciate the difference, but – you know – I’m told these things happen.”

Still nothing. It was all becoming the sort of awkward you get when you accidentally like a crush’s Instagram post from three years ago.

But with a little more potential death.

Fuck it. I was already up to my ears in eldritch nonsense—what was a little more humiliation on top? “Can any of you guys actually hear me?”

As I have sought to stress, I do not recommend approaching this discussion with flippancy, my dear.

“Noted, Big M.” I raised my hands in what I hoped was the universal ‘let’s all be mates’ gesture. “Right. Please let it be noted that I am approaching you all slowly and respectfully. I am radiating all of the good vibes. Can’t speak for my Qi, though. Right now, it’s still pretty miffed about the whole attempted murder thing.”

The druids still didn’t react.

This was beyond frustrating. I kept getting closer, step by step. Then the air around me suddenly thickened. It was like I was wading through honey that was actively trying to drown me. As I struggled, and without any warning at all, the world shifted.

Not visually. Not physically. But deep in the bones of my reality.

Mortal.

Nah, that wasn’t a voice. That was pressure. It was presence. It was a combination of James Earl Jones, Barry White, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen all rolled into one.

“Oh, bloody hell,” I wheezed, clutching my head, which felt like it was about to explode from just that one word. “A bit of warning next time, yeah?”

The druids remained unmoving, but the force of the Nemain kept pressing against my skull, shoving into my mind like an unwelcome lodger. I did what I could to summon some strands of Air Qi to surround my head, and packed as much Earth Qi as I could into my legs and feet to anchor myself to the floor.

My power thrummed under my skin, burning and bright, my one tangible certainty in this increasingly stupid world.

You stand before us. You seek these stones.

“Well, that is the general idea,” I said. “You see, I need them to kill me some Saxon cultivators. We’ve got this plan to—”

You require what we guard. We require what is lost.

“Okay. And when you say ‘lost,’ do you mean ‘misplaced,’ or is this one of those lost to the mists of time kind of deals? Because there’s obviously a bit of a difference.”

The Spear.

Yeah, that wasn’t so much of an answer as a riddle wearing a trench coat. “Which spear? I mean, there are a lot of spears floating around in myth and legend, and I’d rather not be sent haring off after some rusty old stick that turns out to be ceremonial.”

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The Spear of the Morrigan. The Red Branch. The Soul-Piercer.

“Awesome. Cheers for clearing that right up and, crucially, that doesn’t sound ominous at all. I don’t suppose it’s in a nice, accessible museum somewhere, is it? You know, next to a display of Celts in Popular Culture or something like that?”

Lost. Bound. Sealed in the vault of the buried king.

“Right. Because it can’t just be in a nearby cave, can it? Can’t just be in a bloke’s shed. So, which buried king are we talking about? Because, I could be wrong, but I think there’ve been a few.”

The Usurper. The One Who Bargained. The Broken Crown.

“Nope. No clearer. We’ll circle back to that. And do I assume that if I find this spear for you, I’ll be allowed access to the stones?”

Silence.

“Look, can I just say, right now, that this whole thing is turning into an absolute faff? I need to kill the Saxons, but to do that, it turns out I need these stones. But now, in order to get the stones, I need to get you a spear. I don’t know about anyone else, but I think this is starting to feel like one of those massive chain fetch quests where you just know the final boss is three favours away and taking the piss.”

My dear, I would strongly suggest that you—

“No, Merlin, I refuse to let this go. This is needlessly complex. This is side-quest nonsense.” I turned back to the Nemain, who were still, frustratingly, not reacting to my rant. “You lot slaughtered Sir Ector and his men like they were gnats, and now you’re asking for a game of hide and seek? Where’s the apology? The ‘oops, sorry about the bloodbath’? A bit of humility wouldn’t go amiss, you know.”

Regret. Apology. These are human things. We are not human.

Well, that’s an answer that manages to be both infuriating and disturbingly reasonable.

The warriors entered our path. They did not belong. They were undone. This is the way of Nemain.

“Yeah, well, the way of Nemain is a right pain in my arse.”

The presence pressed against me, heavier now. Not angry—Nemains, apparently, didn’t do anger—but relentless.

You seek war. We are war. You seek death. We are death. Do not waste time with foolish human grievances. Retrieve the Spear, and the stones will be unbarred.

I looked at the druids, utterly still in their terrible symmetry, and then up at the swirling sky. This was mad. This was absolute lunacy, wasn’t it? But then, I’d just Qi cultivated my way back from broken bones and near obliteration. So I was already knee-deep in batshit territory.

What was one more step?

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll get you your fucking spear. But let the record show that I am deeply unimpressed with this entire arrangement.”

No reaction. No nods. No eerie glows of approval. The presence in my mind simply withdrew, like a great storm pulling back from the shore.

I turned on my heel and stomped back up the hill, ignoring the chatter of a legendary wizard who apparently absolutely saw this coming and was not inclined to gloat about it, even though he desperately wanted to.

It appears we have reached an accord, then, my dear?

“Yeah,” I said. “An accord. An agreement. A brand new sodding detour on my already ridiculous to-do list.”

And what did we learn, my dear?

“That I don’t like the Nemain. They’re pricks.”

Indeed.

I took a deep breath. “So, what do you reckon. Where is this spear?”

As they said, it is bound within the vault of the buried king.

“Right. Cheers. Because that narrows it right down,” I said.

Ah, but It does, my dear. The buried king should be no mystery to you. You know him as… Lot.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me. King Lot? That one? We’re actually doing this?”

Then the Nemain’s voice came back, twice as loud and deep as before. It absolutely paralysed my already fragile sense of self.

Lot. He who waged war. He who stood against the wolf’s child. The lost father. The broken oath.

I couldn’t speak. The sudden pain of the Nemain’s presence pressed down on me like a handsy sumo wrestler, thick and cloying, pressing into the spaces between my thoughts.

I knew, distantly, that I should be responding, arguing, and rolling my eyes at whatever cryptic nonsense was being shovelled my way, but my tongue wouldn’t work, and my throat felt stuffed with silence.

Instead, my mind reached backward, searching for something solid in the chaos. Memory surfaced unbidden.

A painting.

I saw it in my head as clearly as if I was standing before it again—the sweeping darkness of ‘The Death of King Arthur’ by James Archer in the Manchester Art Gallery. The figures draped in sorrow, Arthur lying pale and still on the boat, his knights in agony around him. But I wasn’t looking at Arthur right now.

I was looking at King Lot.

The man who had fought him, stood against him, and then, in the inevitable, bloody churn of history, for him. A king of Orkney, his name tangled up in ruddy complicated stories where allegiances shifted like sand underfoot and loyalty meant something only until it didn’t.

I remembered standing in front of that painting – I think it had been a date, hadn’t it? - tilting my head at the scene. King Lot had been one of those men history couldn’t quite decide on. Was he noble? A traitor? A pragmatist? Did it even matter? He’d gone to war, had his share of victories, and then—one way or another—he’d ended up in a grave while someone else wrote his story.

Someone else always wrote the story.

And now I was being dragged into it.

I forced herself back into the present, my body frozen in place beneath the awful regard of the Nemain.

King Lot. That was where the spear was. That was where I’d have to go.

And judging by everything I knew of Arthurian history, this was going to be an absolute ballache.

His crown lies broken. His grave sealed. His spear remains bound.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. You need me to go rummaging around in some long-dead king’s tomb because, what, the spear is trapped in there with him? That doesn’t sound like a cursed nightmare at all,” I said, throwing up my hands, anger seemingly releasing me. “Why is it always a vault? Why is it never just, ‘Oh, the spear’s in Dave’s garage. Pop round, pick it up, mind the dog’? No, it’s always some ancient crypt where the dead king’s probably in a mood about being woken up.”

The cycle is war. The cycle is blood.

“Yeah, yeah, ‘time is a flat circle.’ All very deep. Look, do I at least get a map, or are we going full ‘mystic vision quest’ on this one?”

Merlin, who had thus far been suspiciously quiet, finally spoke up. To my understanding, my dear, Lot was interred in the hills beyond the old kingdom’s reach, in a resting place untouched by men. His grave was sealed by the first warlocks of Britain, not merely to keep intruders out—but to keep something in.

“Sure, why wouldn’t it be? Let’s keep ratchetting up the bullshit. Marvellous.”

I felt the pressure of Nemain retreat.

“Well, at least it’s not a fetch quest where I have to find five enchanted chicken feathers or something like that. Lot’s tomb. Right. Great. Lead the way, Big M.”

I took one last glance at the Meridian Stones, standing untouched, the druids still watching, unblinking and waiting.

I had no idea what I was walking into. But if the Nemain wanted their spear, I’d damn well get it. And then, Merlin help me, I was going to fire up Stonehenge and kill some bloody Saxons.

Hmmm. My life has got weird.