‘That must be the entrance,’ Sophie said, gasping for breath.

The whispering was now so loud it felt as if it was filling Mallory’s head and pressing in on him from all sides. With it came a black despair urging him to give up. As he struggled to fight it off, a shape loomed out of the shadows of the trees. Mallory grabbed Sophie and pushed her behind him as he drew his sword.

‘What is it?’ Sophie said.

Mallory couldn’t answer. It looked like a walking corpse, a tall, thin man with otherworldly almond-shaped eyes whose body had been broken on a rack. The skeleton showed through at the ribs and the forearms and on the left side of its jaw. At first, Mallory thought it was brandishing a sword in each hand, but as it marched towards them, Mallory realised that the swords had actually been embedded in the thing’s wrists — the weapons were now a part of it. A luminous purple mist drifted from its mouth and ears and eked out of the corners of its eyes; it was the source of the whispering that was making them feel so despairing.

‘Now would be the time for a good spell,’ Mallory said.

‘You know it doesn’t work like that,’ Sophie replied. ‘I need time, ritual space…’

The warrior bore down on them, weaving its rusty, bloodstained swords in an intricate attack pattern. Mallory attacked it vigorously. It responded instantly, parrying and then thrusting. Mallory jumped back athletically and avoided the dual attack as the creature’s weapons cut rapidly back and forth like a bacon-slicer.

They battled for several minutes but the warrior didn’t appear to tire, and Mallory began to wonder if it was actually an animated dead thing. And its strength was astonishing. The twin blades crashed down on him like pile-drivers, jolting him to the bone. Only his Knight Templar training and whatever innate power lurked in his sword kept him alive.