Lancelot sat in front of the fire, staring in complete disbelief at the letter that Jess had left him. Gawain, sitting beside him, noticed the look on his face, and asked him what was wrong. Lancelot handed him the note.

Gawain read a few lines and then stood up abruptly, dropping the letter, and pulled Lancelot's swords out of their scabbards and threw them away. Lancelot glared at him.

"What's going on?" Arthur asked, suspiciously.

Egreyne, who had just picked up the letter, put her hand over her face and handed it to Tristan, who was sitting beside her.

He scanned the note, taking in most of its content, and then raised his eyebrows. "Jessamine's gone,"

"What?" Guinevere exclaimed, standing up. "What did you do?" she asked Lancelot, accusingly.

"It wasn't me!" he shouted at her, also standing up. "It was… it was bloody Gilioneron!"

Gilioneron, who was standing and talking to Bors and Dagonet some distance away, heard this, and a hunted look crept over his face.

"I have to go now," he said to Bors, and started to walk away quickly.

He was met by a barricade of angry knights and various assorted others, their arms folded, looking dangerous.

"Hello," he said innocently, feigning surprise. "Look, I'd love to stay and chat but, you know, things to do… places to be. So I'll talk to you all some other time, all right?"

They glared at him, and he coughed uncomfortably. "Um, I was just wondering if I could… possibly… get past you all. Please? I… um, really busy this time of year and I… should be getting back because of that… yes, that huge war in… in… uh, Rome."

"This is your God?" Guinevere asked Lancelot incredulously. "He's afraid of you,"

Gilioneron bristled with indignation. "I wouldn't say afraid, exactly,"

"You're not afraid of us?" Lancelot asked him angrily. "If I were you, I would be."

"Ah," Gilioneron said, uncomfortably. "Well, that's plain enough. But I'm afraid I'm at a loss as to what you all appear to think I've done."

Lancelot held Jess's letter up in front of Gilioneron's face and then began to read from it. "Listen to this. 'Dear Lancelot, If you are reading this, then I am already gone. Gilioneron will have already sent me back to my own world.'"

His eyes grew wide and he backed away a little bit. "Well, you see, she's actually left a few quite important details out of that, and I-"

"Why the hell didn't you keep a closer watch on Kelermes?" Guinevere asked angrily.

"Oh," he said, in a horrified voice. "She hasn't left any details out. She's even put in a few that I didn't tell her."

"And what do you mean you can't bring her back?" Lancelot demanded. "You're a God, aren't you?"

Gilioneron laughed. "You can tell you two were meant to be together, you know. She asked the exact same question."

The temperature of the clearing lowered by a considerable amount and Lancelot's glare turned into a barely concealed mask of hatred.

"Right," Gilioneron said slowly. "Not helpful. Okay. But I mean, seriously, who would ever think that they would need to transport people into different worlds? So I didn't acquire the power."

Lancelot sighed and put his head in his hands. "But you can ask for help from other Gods, can't you? There must be at least one who deals with this sort of thing!"

Gilioneron shrugged. "None that I know of,"

Lancelot began to pace back and forth in front of them. "There's got to be one! Okay, Scythians – thunder, the sea, fire… earth, love and the sun. No, they're all useless."

"Hey," Cimmeria said, offended.

He turned to Eunyphore. "The Greeks. Come on, you must have one."

Eunyphore shook her head helplessly. "I'm sorry, Lancelot. We don't have anyone like that."

Lancelot swore and then turned to Guinevere and Ytria. "What about the Wodes? Or the Saxons?"

Cynric shook his head. "We don't,"

Guinevere nodded. "Neither do we,"

He sighed, and kicked the ground in frustration.

"I think I may know of one," Fulwood said, appearing behind them.

Gilioneron raised his eyebrows. "Really?"

She nodded hesitantly. "The branch of the Celts that sailed east to Ireland… uh, Dannu. They called themselves the Tuatha dé Dananns, and they had a Goddess who could transport them between their world and the world of fairies and leprechauns."

They all looked at Gilioneron inquiringly.

"Red hair?" he asked tentatively.

Fulwood shrugged. "I don't know,"

He thought about it for a while. "Oh, of course!" he said, hitting his forehead with his hand. "I know who this is! It's Dana! I can't believe I didn't think of that."

"I'm going to kill him," Lancelot said, moving towards Gilioneron's throat with his arms outstretched. "I'm going to kill him!"

Gawain and Dagonet wrestled him off and Gilioneron looked at him curiously. "What's wrong with you? I just solved your problem, didn't I?"

Lancelot stood up and brushed himself off. "You just sent a young girl with no fighting experience whatsoever except for a few incompetent Saxons to dispatch the greatest fighter this world has ever seen. We just wasted ten minutes trying to think of a way to get there to help her, and we discover that they were ten minutes we could have used being there already, but for your failing memory. She could already be dead by now!"

"Ah," Gilioneron said. "I hadn't thought of that,"

"What are you waiting for?" Lancelot thundered at him. "Go and find this Dana and get her to take us to Jessamine's world!"

"Right," Gilioneron said, and hurried off.

-------------------------

It was about midday, and Jess walked down the streets of what she guessed was an English town somewhere – there were too many people with indecipherable accents for it to be anywhere else. She attracted a few strange looks, but she just ignored them and kept walking. It was only when she started getting stopped by policemen that she decided she probably needed to do something about her appearance.

She walked into a clothes store where she could see a long black leather coat on one of the mannequins out the front, and asked a rather scared-looking shop assistant where she could find them. The young girl was so nervous she had to ask Jess to repeat herself twice – but, of course, this also may have been a result of Jess's Australian drawl.

She took a coat of appropriate size and two other random garments, pretending to want to try them on in the changing rooms, and as soon as she was inside and behind the curtain, she took one of her knives out.

After a bit of surreptitious searching, she located the security patch on the coat and carefully cut it out of the inner pocket, stuffing it behind the mirror so that no one would notice it. She then put the coat on and turned the collar up so that it hid the hilts of her swords. Then, seeing as she had chosen her other items of clothing from the back-facing side of a rack right next to the door, she went over to put them away and then just walked out of the store.

She was following a train of bodies. No wonder the police kept stopping her.

All along the streets there were people lying, lifeless, their friends and family helplessly trying to revive them. She could hear the distant wailing of many sirens, and guessed that the emergency services were sending a lot of ambulances and a fire crew as well, because this many people suddenly dropping 'dead' could mean a gas leak or poison in the air or something.

People still looked at her strangely as she passed, but their looks tended now to say "Sadist weirdo," instead of "Suspicious freak wearing armour."

Being a fairly small town, Kelermes had reached the outskirts fairly quickly, and Jess could see evidence that the maddened gildatore had started going into peoples' houses to get the sustenance she needed. There was a man lying half-in, half-out of the gutter, his cigarette still in his mouth, but hanging at an angle so that its still-smouldering end was burning the skin near his chin.

She knelt down and took the cigarette out of his mouth, stubbing the fire out on the ground. Then, as an afterthought, she took a cigarette from his discarded packet where it lay on the ground, and borrowed the lighter that he was still holding in his hand, for the simple reason that she needed something to distract her from all of the horror around her. If she concentrated too hard on all the bodies she'd have to stop and help them all, and then she'd never find Kelermes.

She stood on a hill overlooking the farmsteads below the city, and could only see death and destruction on the first few. She took a long drag of the cigarette and blew the smoke out in a clear stream, wondering briefly if the gildatore was consuming animal souls as well. Across the laneway from one of the ransacked properties, Jess could see a house with lights on, with a grassy meadow backing off it. She could also see people's silhouettes moving around inside the house, evidence that the soul-sucking rampage hadn't reached there yet.

She shrugged, thinking that it was as good a place as any for a cataclysmic battle between the forces of good and evil, and began to walk down towards the field, ducking through one of the flimsy fences, which thankfully either wasn't electric or wasn't turned on, because if it had been she would have been plastered to the wire and unable to move, what with all the metal she was wearing.

A sheep looked inquiringly at her as she passed, and she glared at it, just in case it was hiding Kelermes. She kept walking, mildly confused at the fact that she had left at midnight and arrived here in the sunshine, but shrugging it off. She reached the centre of the field and perched delicately on the rim of a water trough, still smoking, and then unsheathed one of her swords and began to sharpen it, at first with her whetstone but then on the metal rim of the trough, waiting for Kelermes.

--------------------------

Dana was, in fact, blonde, and although she was tiny and delicate she could certainly carry her end of an argument, as they were discovering.

"Look," Gilioneron said, trying to be reasonable but about to lose his temper seriously. "The most dangerous fighter in this world has just gone through to their world and is eating peoples' souls! And when she's consumed their entire species she will come back and destroy this world!"

Dana glared at him. "And whose fault is that, horse boy? Yours! And I'm not going to help you clean up your own mess."

"She will kill all of your people!"

Dana raised an eyebrow at him. "Do you really think she even knows where Dannu is? Besides, we can look after ourselves."

"Please!" Gilioneron shouted at her, getting down on his knees. "Look, I'm begging you! Please, can you just help us?"

She shook her head. "I have better things to do than provide a ferry service between worlds."

They were all silent for a while.

"I can't believe this!" Lancelot shouted, striding forward towards the Goddess, only to be restrained between Arthur and Gilioneron. "Does nothing matter to you? Will you throw away thousands of lives for a petty squabble and a mere whim? You're as bad as the Romans!"

He spat at her feet and Gilioneron covered his face with his hand. "Oh, Gods,"

Dana looked at him icily. "No human is that noble. There's got to be some other reason you're trying to get to this other world,"

Lancelot was silent for a while. "This idiot," he said finally, jerking a thumb at Gilioneron, "sent one of the girls from that world back to fight Kelermes. The problem is, she's practically never held a sword before in her life. And we have to go and help her because… I… she… oh, Gods. Kelermes is going to kill her. I have to save her. I love her."

Dana stared at him for a while longer and then smiled at him, her eyes misting. "Why didn't you say so?"

Gilioneron threw his hands in the air and turned away. "Women,"

-------------------------------

Jess had given up on sharpening her sword because the sound it was making was both disturbing the sheep and covering up any sounds that Kelermes might make if she were approaching. They were both fairly sharp, anyway, so it wasn't like stopping would be detrimental to her chances of future success.

She sat on the water trough for about half an hour, and, just as she had been there so long the sheep were no longer afraid of her, there was a lot of screaming from the farmhouse. Jess sheathed her swords and stood up warily, watching as a young girl broke away from the house and started sprinting towards the fields. Jess's attention, however, was on the figure that followed the girl.

She was nothing else if not beautiful, Jess would give her that. She had long, wavy black hair and she was as skinny as a rake. She was wearing black leather armour just like Jess's, and so it was no wonder people had looked at her hostilely when she hadn't been wearing the jacket. They must have thought that the two of them were on the same side.

When Jess saw the little girl start running towards the paddock she was in, she slunk away to the waist-high stone wall that formed the border with the neighbouring field and ducked down behind it. She heard running footsteps and then waited for the girl to clamber over the fence, reaching up and pulling the young girl down beside her with her hand over her mouth.

"It's all right," she said, as the girl tried to get away. "Look, go and fetch the police. I'll deal with her."

The girl nodded and Jess let her go, turning to look cautiously over the top of the wall.

"Are you a vampire slayer?" the girl asked her, looking in horror at the two sword hilts that were just visible over the collar of Jess's jacket.

Jess laughed. "I wish I was. Now, go! Quickly, before she finds you."

The young girl scrambled to her feet and bolted across the field towards the village, and Jess sighed and wished that it were her running to fetch the police and someone else doing the fighting. Then she stood up and moved to the centre of the field. Trying to hide would just make things worse, and she wanted as much room to maneuver as she could get. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on everything around her. A bee buzzed past her and she sliced it in half with one of her swords, and then sighed and turned around.

Kelermes was standing there, arms folded, staring at her. "Hello,"

Jess, her heart beating fast, to her credit, didn't double-take in shock. "Or, as they like to say here in Britain, top of the morning,"

Kelermes laughed, but it was a mirthless sound, and her eyes remained cold. "What are you doing here?"

Jess shrugged. "That's a good question. Gilioneron sent me here, I will say that."

Kelermes took a sharp intake of breath, the air hissing between her teeth. "That incompetent fool! I can't believe he made you a gildatore! You're not even a Sarmatian!"

Jess gritted her teeth and unsheathed her long Sarmatian sword. "Being a gildatore has nothing to do with being a Sarmatian. A gildatore is just a priestess of Gilioneron."

Kelermes gave her a black look. "Yes, and Gilioneron is a Sarmatian God."

"So?" Jess nearly shouted. "Other races have different skills. Maybe he wanted somebody different!"

"What skills have you got?" Kelermes asked her acidly.

Jess gritted her teeth even harder and clenched her fist on her sword, and then sheathed it again. "Diplomacy, for starters,"

Kelermes laughed again, but this time in a slightly maniacal way that was terrifying to listen to. "What quality of his did you take?"

"I chose not to take one," Jess said stonily.

Kelermes grinned at her. "I chose ruthlessness. And, because I slept with him a few times, he let me choose another."

"And that was?" Jess asked, dreading the answer.

"Oh, just power," Kelermes said, and her eyes shone with an insane light.

------------------------------

Lancelot peered cautiously out of the alley that they had all landed in and then turned back to look at the others. "You live here?" he asked Fulwood, Pascoe and Campbell.

They all shook their heads. "Not here, exactly," Fulwood said. "This isn't Toowoomba, where we last were, and we don't even live there."

Dana nodded. "We came through at the point where the last person going through landed."

"So is this where Jess lives?" he asked, still incredulous.

Pascoe, who was standing at the edge of the alley, shook her head. "This isn't even the country where Jess lives. We're in England."

"England?" Guinevere asked, going to stand beside her. "Where's that?"

Fulwood sighed. "Well, basically, its… where you come from, but 1500 years into the future."

"I don't think we have time for any explanations right now," Gilioneron said, looking around at all of the knights' puzzled faces. "We have to find Jessamine."

"Can you find her?" Dagonet asked Fulwood, who shook her head.

"What about you?" Cynric asked Dana. "You tracked her to here, can you find out where she's gone?"

Dana frowned for a moment, and then nodded. "I think so, yes. At least, I can track the other gildatore, and I suspect that where you'll find her, you'll find Jessamine."

Galahad nodded. "You're probably right."

"Let's go," said Lancelot, and they moved out into the street.

They got no further than five metres into a street where Kelermes had obviously not yet begun to feast before a young girl screamed and pointed at them. "Oh my God! It's Keira Knightley!"

The knights all unsheathed their swords as soon as she screamed, and Fulwood, Pascoe and Campbell all exchanged a look.

"We're going to have to run for it," Fulwood said, looking at Dana.

"And Clive Owen!" another girl shouted.

"Right," Dana said, and then led the knights through the street at a run.

"What are they doing?" Arthur asked Fulwood, as they ran.

She shook her head. "You don't want to know,"

"I heard one shout that she wanted someone's autograph," Bors said confusedly. "What does that mean?"

Fulwood and Pascoe exchanged a glance. "Just keep running,"

----------------------------

Jess sighed. "This is my world," she said, gesturing around at the field, the maddened sheep that were trying with all their might to get away from Kelermes, and the distant road. "And I can't let you destroy it just to finish off the Romans when if you wait long enough they're going to cark it anyway."

Kelermes inclined her head. "Then I'll just have to destroy you, too,"

"I had a feeling you were going to say that," Jess said, unsheathing her swords.

Kelermes sprang at her with such speed that she nearly didn't see it. She certainly hadn't seen her get out her sword. She bent back just in time, leaning backwards like in The Matrix as the gildatore's glowing blue sword sliced through the air where her stomach had been just seconds before. Then, as Kelermes raised the sword to bring it down, Jess leant back on her hands and finished her backwards walkover, springing onto her feet.

Then she had to parry a few times as the unbelievably fast warrior swung three overhand blows that would have at the very least broken her shoulder blades. Jess noticed that she was being backed into a corner of the field and darted away to the centre again, throwing the dagger in her right boot at Kelermes, who hit it for a six as if they were playing cricket or baseball with her sword.

Jess threw another as Kelermes advanced towards her, but the warrior ducked underneath it and then Jess only just managed to rise and step away in time to avoid another huge overhand.

Wow, Jess thought to herself, she was right about the power. That blow would have shattered rocks, had there been some handy.

She parried a few more thrusts and then managed to get a swipe of her own in, although it was pathetic compared to the standard of swordplay Kelermes was operating on. She then had to radically adjust her tactics as the gildatore started using quick, underhand, slashing attacks, one of which caught Jess a nasty cut on her left upper arm before she could manage to convert. They fought for what seemed like hours – although it was probably only minutes – Jess always on the defensive, unable to find an opening to attack and gaining more injuries the longer they spent hacking away at each other. Then Kelermes kicked her in the knee and she was so shocked she only just ducked in time.

As they kept fighting, Jess now with a bruised knee, a cut on her left arm, a slash across her stomach, a nick on her right ear and a scratch on her right thigh, the party of knights arrived at a run from the town. They stopped in horror, standing at the fence, as they watched the battle, and Lancelot was about to run forward to help Jess when Gilioneron stopped him.

"If you going running in there now, you'll distract her. It's a miracle she's still alive as it is; don't add to the odds against her."

Fulwood looked speculatively at the farmhouse and then turned to Pascoe. "I have an idea."

The two gildatorae hadn't noticed their spectators, probably because they were both concentrating so hard on their battle, but it seemed to Jess that Kelermes' strikes were getting weaker and slower. Maybe she needs more souls to keep her going, Jess thought. Just as that occurred to her, however, Kelermes looked at the sheep, still madly trying to climb the stone wall of the paddock, and swung her sword so hard that Jess's slipped out of her hands.

As she raced to pick it up, the black-haired gildatore went over towards the flock, grabbed one by the leg and put her other hand inside of its chest. When she pulled it out, the sheep fell to the ground, lifeless. Jess was so horrified she forgot to do anything until probably the penultimate sheep1, when she threw yet another dagger, but it just went through the feasting gildatore.

Kelermes walked back towards her, and swung her now madly glowing green sword – Jess supposed it changed colour based on what kinds of souls it was running on – so hard that it sliced directly through Jess's curved Scytho-Median sword. She stared at it in horror and then dropped it, running away to get back to the centre of the field again.

Fulwood came back to the group at the gate, holding a shotgun she had salvaged from the farmhouse. It was loaded, too – she came from a farm, and she knew how to use one.

Lancelot looked at her curiously. "What's that?"

"It's a sort of… super-powered crossbow," she said, raising the gun so she could sight along the shaft.2

"You can't fire it!" Pascoe said worriedly. "Not only can we not see them clearly, they move around so much you might hit Jess!"

Fulwood sighed. "It may be our only chance, Pascoe,"

It was true that the knights couldn't see them clearly. Apparently the amount of souls she had stolen had created a film of mist rising from the bodies – there had been some bits around the town, too – and basically all they could see was flashes of light green swung around like a sword. As a matter of fact, it looked rather like a lightsabre, but Fulwood, Pascoe and Campbell all assumed that this probably wasn't the case.

Fulwood pointed at the glowing green object as it swung again. "That's Kelermes. We just have use the sword as a guide to where she is."

"That's a bit of a gamble, isn't it?" Lancelot asked nervously.

"I thought you liked games of chance, Lancelot," Arthur said, amusedly, and then was glared at by Guinevere.

"Not when we're wagering Jessamine's life!" Lancelot shouted at him, and then clenched his fists and his jaw. "All right. But wait until you can see that the sword is swinging in a direction that indicates that Kelermes is in front of Jessamine in the range of your… super-powered crossbow."

Fulwood nodded. "Right,"

There was silence for a while.

"Will you tell me when that is?" Fulwood asked tentatively.

Tristan nodded. "I will,"

The mist that seemed to be rising off the bodies was making visibility difficult for Jess as well, especially when Kelermes started kicking her again, because she had been relying on the glowing to tell her when the sword was coming. She stumbled and tripped over the water trough, rolling away just in time to avoid being decapitated by the glowing sword, which instead cut through the same water trough.

She scrambled to her feet and then fell over again as Kelermes punched her in the face. She couldn't see the glowing green light anywhere. She turned around a couple of times and then opted for trying to run out of the mist, which didn't work when she found herself face to face with the wall. She sighed and stood with her back to it, thinking that at least she knew Kelermes wasn't behind her.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, the green light appeared, and Jess surmised that Kelermes must have been holding it behind her back to hide the tell-tale glow. She parried a few more thrusts and then started to move out from the wall to get more room to defend herself.

She heard, distantly, Tristan shout something and then nearly dropped her sword. Tristan? What was he doing here? She then regained her composure and swung a deadly underhand attack out of the way, and then stopped in shock when she heard a gunshot.

Kelermes turned, searching for whatever new enemy had arrived, and, in that tiny moment when she let her guard down, Jess took a lesson from Cynric and swung her sword in a circle that removed Kelermes' head. The mist began to clear almost immediately and she saw some sheep start to get up and run away.

Unfortunately, it was then that she realised that the bullet fired before had hit her. She had read in a book somewhere that you didn't feel the initial impact of a bullet, and hadn't believed it, but she could now see that it was true. She dropped her sword and pressed both hands to her stomach, falling to her knees. She then nearly threw up from the pain and ended up lying on her back on the ground, both hands still desperately trying to put enough pressure on the wound in her stomach to stop any serious bleeding.

She heard, again distantly, someone shout her name, and wondered how anyone here knew who she was. But then, Gilioneron, Lancelot and some blonde girl emerged from the mist. She glared at the girl, just in case, as Lancelot knelt beside her.

"Go and fetch a… find someone who can heal her!" he shouted up at Gilioneron, who looked helplessly at the blonde girl.

"Asclepios," she said softly. "The ancient Greek God of healing."

"You heard her!" he shouted at them both, and they exchanged a worried look and then disappeared.

He leaned down and hugged her. "I'm so glad you're still alive,"

She began to cry into his shoulder. "I thought I'd never see you again,"

They stayed that way for a while before he composed himself and sat up.

He put his hands over the injury on her stomach as well and then shook his head. "What is it with you and nearly dying every fight you go into?"

She swallowed and laughed wryly. "Speak to the people who keep shooting me,"

"I love you, too," he said, looking down at her seriously.

She took a blood-stained hand off her stomach and put it over her face. "Oh, God, you read my letter,"

"Wasn't I supposed to?" he asked her, puzzled.

She nodded. "Well, yes. But the problem with those letters is that they're written in the expectation that you'll never see the addressee again. So they're always really embarrassing. Even if it was all true."

He sighed, shook his head and then leaned down and kissed her. "Will you marry me?"

She blinked a few times, shocked, and then laughed. "I don't know if this is the time, Lancelot,"

"There mightn't be another time," he said, fiercely, and she realised that he wanted to know just in case she died.

"Yes," she said, linking her blood-stained fingers with his, and he leaned forward and kissed her again.

"Lancelot," she heard Gilioneron say, uncomfortably, and looked up to see him, the blonde girl and an old guy in Greek-looking robes, who knelt on her other side and lifted their hands off the wound.

"It's serious, but I'll be able to fix it," he said, looking up at Gilioneron. "What did it, though? I've never seen anything like it before in my life! (And, being a God, I've had a long one!)"

Jess laughed. "I'd be surprised if you had. It's a sort of… super-powered crossbow. There'll be a small, metal object in the wound somewhere. Please don't heal it into me,"

He nodded. "Do you want me to fix your other wounds as well?"

She shrugged. "It might be nice,"

He nodded again and then put his hands on the bullet wound, and in less than five seconds she could feel that it was completely healed.

"My God," she said, amazedly.

"Indeed," Gilioneron said, amused.

"It's sort of a figure of speech where I come from," she said, apologetically.

"I think you're right to go now," Asclepios said, standing up and brushing himself off.

She sat up, looking at all of the places she had been injured. "This is ridiculous!"

He shrugged. "Well, I would have done a better job but I guessed that speed might be more important,"

She stood up. "No, no it's great. I just… never imagined that it would be this fast. Or good,"

"You're the one who suggested him," Gilioneron said.

"Yeah, but I'd only heard that he told people how to use herbs and things," she said, scratching her head. "The Greeks… uh, Hellenes, say he never actually healed anyone."

Asclepios shrugged. "It's been a while since I last did anything, what with the Roman takeover. You get bored."

She shook her head incredulously. "Wow. I actually have something to thank the Romans for,"

Gilioneron nodded. "I think it might be time we all went home,"

They walked back towards the fence, and Lancelot reached down and took her hand. "Will you really marry me?"

She looked at him. "No, I just felt sorry for you because I was dying and now that I'm alive I'm going to run off with the first man I see. Which, unfortunately, appears to be Arthur. Of course I'll marry you! I wouldn't have said it unless I meant it."

He sighed in relief and then hugged her. "I was just afraid that you would want to stay here, in your own world."

She shook her head. "You know, to tell you the truth, I hate it here. Absolutely hate it. There may have been some people that I liked here, but the world in general was terrible. But your world is great," she smiled at him. "And not just because you're there."

He nodded. "Yeah, I quite like it,"

Fulwood, Pascoe and Campbell all ran up and hugged her.

"I'm so glad you're all right!" Campbell sobbed, knocking Lancelot out of the way.

"Thank you, Sarah," she said, bending over backwards under the weight of three girls. "I'm quite glad I'm all right, too,"

"We were so afraid we would hit you with the bullet when we fired," Fulwood said, stepping back to give her some room.

Lancelot opened his mouth to say something but Jess stood on his foot and shook her head in what she hoped was an imperceptible way.

"Luckily, it didn't," she said, clearly, hoping he would get the message.

He looked at her and shut his mouth. "Yes," he said, somewhat uncertainly.

Jess looked at them all. "Now, I just have to talk to Gilioneron and then we can send you all back home."

Campbell shook her head firmly. "I'm going back to King-Arthur-land until I get Tristan's autograph,"

Jess shook her head. "Campbell, you have a family to go back to. A family who will miss you. The only reason I'm going back is because I don't. Do you really want your parents to think for the rest of their lives that you ran away and abandoned them? Tristan's not worth it, believe me."

Fulwood looked at her. "We'll miss you, Jess,"

She laughed. "I'll miss you, too,"

She hugged them all again, and then went over to talk to Gilioneron.

"What's an autograph?" Lancelot asked Fulwood.

"It's a… it's too hard to explain," she said, wearily. "Get Jess to tell you,"

"You better look after her," Pascoe said, fiercely.

"Yeah," Campbell said. "Or we'll find you. And beat you up,"

Lancelot looked at them all – one, a farm girl, one, a tiny ballet dancer and one, a slightly larger scale model of the farm girl in both directions – and nodded and then hurried away.

"I think her friends just bullied me," he said quietly to Arthur, as Jess, Gilioneron and Dana all walked back over towards them.

"It happens," Arthur said wearily. "You get used to it,"

Jess looked at her three friends and then hugged them all individually. "Goodbye, guys. You were the best friends I could possibly have asked for,"

"Except for them," Fulwood said, pointing at the knights.

Jess shook her head. "No. I mean, they're good friends, that's true, but they're not you guys." She looked at them. "Now, I know that none of you have seen the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie because I refused to go because Elizabeth was evil by that point and I sort of convinced you all not to watch it either. But I want you to find it, somehow, and watch on it my birthday. In the boarding house. For me,"

Fulwood nodded, because the other two were crying too hard to do anything. "We will,"

"Now, all think about the time and place you want to go to," Dana said, concentrating.

"Right before I came to get you might be a good time for you guys," Fulwood said to Pascoe and Campbell, and they nodded, and they all closed their eyes.

After a few seconds they disappeared, and Jess sighed, and wiped the tears off her face.

Gilioneron looked at her. "Do you want to choose a quality now?"

She tilted her head on the side, thinking about it. "Do you have good-at-fighting-without-trying-but-doesn't-in-anyway-effect-my-personality-ness?"

He thought about it. "Probably,"

She nodded. "Yeah, that'll do for now,"

He laughed. "By the Gods, I'm glad you came here, Jessamine, or none of the rest of us would have anything to laugh at."

She nodded. "I have that effect on people,"

"Not to mention Lancelot, Dagonet and Tristan would all be dead," Dana said, and Gilioneron looked at her.

"What?" he asked, incredulously.

She shrugged. "That's what happened in the timeline of this world. And it would have happened in our world, too, if Jessamine hadn't arrived."

"How?" he asked her.

Dana shrugged, but Jess sighed. "It's a long story,"

He looked at her. "Later, then."

She nodded. "Whatever you say."

They walked back to the rest of the knights, and then, slowly, they both began to laugh.

------------------------------

Roughly a month and a half Later

February 1st (Imbolc)

Stonehenge

Lancelot and Jessamine were married on her birthday, which, by some happy chance, managed to fall on the day of Imbolc, the start of spring, so the marriage celebrations were tied in with the ceremonies involved in celebrating the sacred day. She turned eighteen and reflected that, although she hadn't actually had the huge party involving friends and alcohol she had always expected, she did have a party that still fit those descriptors, and it was even better than she could have imagined.

Guinevere, Cimmeria and Ytria had all been bridesmaids, and Lancelot had picked Arthur to be his best man. Gilioneron officiated, and, although he forgot the words at one stage and had to be prompted by Merlin, everything went pretty smoothly.

Dana was there, in order to instruct them in how they should properly celebrate Imbolc, and Bridget, the goddess whose day Imbolc was, also put in an appearance to bless their union. The Wodes said this was fairly common but everyone else was fairly shocked.

As she kissed Lancelot for the first time as a wife and not a lover, she thought fondly that maybe Fulwood, Pascoe and Campbell were doing as she had asked this very second, and watching Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

------------------------

It was nighttime, and Fulwood – the farm girl – and Pascoe – the tiny ballet dancer – and Campbell – the other one – all sat in front of Pascoe's laptop. They were watching At World's End, and they were so engrossed in it that they didn't notice the weather starting to turn stormy.

Their Japanese friend Airi, who was being detained in a different dorm, kept calling Fulwood every few minutes to see where they were up to in the movie, because she had seen it several times and loved it, and kept wanting to talk about it.

They reached the stage in the movie where Will asked Elizabeth to marry him again and she replied that she didn't think that this was the right time, and the computer froze. Fulwood, who was talking to Airi at the time, put her hand on the touch pad and tried to at least pause and then un-pause the movie.

As soon as she did so, Airi's voice at the other end of the phone went all distant and fuzzy, and there was a sort of echoey sound coming out of her phone. Concentrating on the phone, she raised a fist to bang on the computer.

"What did you say, Airi? I can't hear you. There's something wrong with my phone,"

"Um, Fulwood," Pascoe said hesitantly, as she saw what Fulwood was going to do with the fist.

"Yeah, just a minute, Pascoe," Fulwood said, and then thumped the computer a good backhand.

There was a blinding flash of light, and when Campbell and Pascoe looked up, there was nothing to be seen of Fulwood but the charred remains of her mobile phone, and the computer was stuck on the title screen of the At World's End DVD.

"Oh, bugger," Pascoe said, thumping the bed a good one. "And this time I have to do it all by myself!"

"You have me to help you," Campbell said, trying to be comforting, and putting a hand on Pascoe's shoulder.

Pascoe put her head in her hands. "Save me,"

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The End

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1 Sorry. I know the word penultimate is a little showy, but I mean, how many times do you really get the chance to use it? I just had to. Second last is just so boring in comparison.

2 You can tell that, although Fulwood knows how to use a gun, I don't. I don't even know if guns have shafts, but oh well.