She holds her nerve, clutching at the soft fur of the dog under her palms, willing her tender heart to beat again.

‘Come on, Thistle,’ she pleads. ‘You have to come back. You have to want to.’

There is a loud crack, as if lightning has struck only paces away from where she kneels. A searing pain shoots through Tilda’s hands. She hears a yelp, and the dog leaps to its feet, growling and sneezing at the same time, before recognizing its mistress and bouncing all over her.

‘It worked!’ Tilda is laughing, knocked onto her back by the exuberant hound. ‘Good girl!’ She gets up. ‘Come on, Dylan needs us.’ She makes herself go over to the grave and peer in. Half of her does not want to disturb it further; is fearful of doing so. She has the torc now. She has just done something miraculous.

Do I need anything else?

As much as she would rather hurry back to Dylan, she can hear Seren’s voice telling her that she cannot defeat Nesta without whatever it is the man in the grave has with him. Tilda grabs a nearby spade and drops into the pit. The moment she starts to dig, Thistle joins in, so that it takes them less than a minute to scrape though the thin layers of stone and earth to the lid of the coffin itself. Rubbing away the dirt from the wooden planks she finds there are only holes where the nails were driven in to hold the top down, the metal having rusted away to nothing after so many years in the particularly wet ground. Whilst water weakens iron over time, it has hardened the wood of the coffin lid, so that she cannot break through it with the spade, but has to pry it up. Tilda is surprised at how light it feels, and at how easily she is able to remove it from the grave and cast it aside. It is only now that she notices the torc is doing more than gleaming, it is actually glowing, pulsing with its own light.

Is it making me work better, or is it the other way around?