“I come bearing gifts,” Alice begins, opening up her duffel. She peeks into the bag, tilting it to the side. “Underwear, socks, a couple pairs of jeans, Star Wars T-shirts, tampons, pads, your favorite pajamas. Your shampoo and conditioner since I dunno where we’re going, but wherever it is, I doubt they’re gonna have anything but white-people hair products, so…” I choke out the most genuine laugh I’ve had in weeks. Her self-satisfied grin makes me laugh too, and then she’s laughing and it’s like when we were kids, setting each other off during sleepovers. Giggling and giggling in the dark.

But we’re not kids. And everything is awful, and painful, and raw. And I’m so, so scared, and then I’m sobbing, and her arms are around me, and I’m shaking and crying until, eventually, I wear myself out.

I let the world go dark with Nick’s Pendragon coin in my hand.

The clang of metal against metal in the distance. Grunts of effort, groans of pain. Sounds that I remember. Have remembered. Am remembering.

Am hearing, already and almost.

My eyes snap open. I am standing at the crest of a battle.

Down the hill, more than a dozen knights with spears. My men stand in a line on either side of me, in chain mail, leathers, and helmets, holding shields bearing their sigils. Here, some of their names, their original names, come to me in a rush of Old Welsh:

Boras, Cai, Bedwyr, Llameryg, Medrawd.

These names are who they were to Arthur, before hundreds of years of literature and songs were written across the globe. Before the world wrote his fictions and the Order began hiding the truth.

We circle a crackling black curtain, blinking in and out of existence. A Shadowborn Gate to the other side.

“A wyt barawd?” Are you ready? The question is asked by my first knight, beside me—my chosen lieutenant. Llancelod, Sir Lancelot, eyes grim.

“Dyfod yr amser.” The time has come.

My words are whispered, but down the hill, a hundred feet away, a hooded, robed figure moves forward at my command. His footsteps leave smoking blue shapes on the earth behind him.

Myrddin. Merlin.

The sorcerer reaches a long-fingered hand high in the air and slices it down, rending the Gate open. A cut to cleave the veil between dimensions and finish our fight with the Shadowborn forever—bring the battle to their door instead of letting them pick us off at their leisure.

It is a mistake.

Immediately, my knights are swarmed by glowing, flying imps. Creatures on three and four legs stream out of the opening, leaping onto their backs. My knights fight back with wooden and metal spears that do nothing against demon hides. Merlin is a blue flash, conjuring an arsenal of weapons to obliterate the horde.