- Help! - Help!
- Give me that, hurry!
- Robin?
- Wait.
Can you just stop and wait, please?
- Talk, just talk, why won't you-
- Let go.
- Please!
- There's no one else to rely on.
Stop now and talk.
We're family!
We are family, we're merry gods.
We are the queerest of the queers.
That's why we're here!
We are going on a pilgrimage.
- Vulnerability and compassion
are the prerequisites for strength.
Black turns to red,
organs heal, cells regenerate.
Necrotic flesh recedes.
The ritual has begun.
We can't remember what the ritual is.
Can't bargain with it.
You can't stop it.
The ritual has begun.
The ritual is an infinite number of working parts,
moving pieces surrounding you.
The ritual is what's going to wake Albion.
Albion, asleep for so long,
eyes calcified, ears covered over,
shuttered like every other shop.
Cool in the sea.
Just remember to send it away again
before it swallows the world.
Dive down into the flesh,
show all of them, show everyone,
just how odd and other the heart is
that beats inside their chest.
Initiation is quite different from the other side.
- To find out the truth, the truth.
May God bless you and be with you.
The sight, the sound.
I will study all our secrets.
Concealed until they're all revealed.
Fate.
I thank thee for these, help me to find.
Pick a path.
- Any path?
- Whichever one is calling to you,
whichever one feels right.
- You sure this is even a crossroads?
I can't hear any of them calling.
- Where are those bells coming from?
- Look, can you see it?
I think it's a rabbit. - No, it's a hare.
- Good morning!
- I wonder what it wants.
- Good morning.
- Lovely day for it.
- It is.
- Can I ask you a favor?
- Well, that depends.
- Would you mind, awfully,
moving off my crossroads, please?
That's it, come on, this way.
If you all just like to come over here, this way.
And you, please, just come off this crossroads now,
this is my crossroads. - No.
- Why?
- I'm not moving.
- Please.
Why can't you just be nice and move off of my crossroads?
- This isn't your crossroads.
- Oh, hold on. - Is it?
- Hold on, he might be able to offer us directions.
- Yes!
Yes, I might be able to help you
if she moves off of my crossroads.
Where do you need to go?
- We're looking for- - Let me guess.
You're looking for an artifact
of immeasurable power, yes?
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- What?
Do you know where the Grail is?
- The Grail?
You're looking for the Grail?
Ah.
- And a giant, and a boy.
- Really?
Oh, let me have a look at you.
Look at you, you're
not from around here, are you?
You are dodgy, nefarious magic twins.
- What are you doing here? - I'd just ignore it.
- I like you, you're obnoxious.
You simply don't give a fuck-
- I don't give a fuck.
This is a trickster spirit.
- What if I am?
I was born and manifested here.
I have more right to be here than you.
You look like you just got off the boat.
Is that what happened?
Did you just get off the boat, are you refugee gods?
Dirty, stinking refugee gods coming over to Albion?
Infecting our kinds and our ways with your magic!
I won't stand for it.
You have no right to be here.
This is my Albion. - Excuse me.
I was born here!
- So am I, I'm from here.
- She's not from here, look at her.
Look at her!
Are you?
I can smell your magic all over you.
You're not from this country.
Dark, strange type.
- Stranger than you will ever know.
- Right, just pick a path.
Just pick, literally, any path.
- Yeah, pick a path, come on now, guys.
Pick a path.
What path are we gonna pick?
- Sophia, pick a path.
- Yeah, ask Sophia first, Sophia, pick a path.
I wouldn't go that way if I were you.
No, I really think that's a bad idea.
You probably should stop your friends going that way.
It's very dangerous.
- Come on, this way.
- Promise. - Yes.
Knights of the crossroads.
Oh, Percival?
I don't think he wants to go with you.
That's right, quickly Percy, run on.
Run rabbit, run, run, quickly, he's gone.
- So it's good to be back home.
Does seem to have changed a great deal
since I was last here.
You know, I've said it before,
but I do seem to find nostalgia the most peculiar emotion.
You originally from Albion?
Well, of course you are.
Why would you be attempting to save this land
if you weren't a native?
You know, you look like an Englishman.
Are you English?
Perhaps you speak a foreign tongue.
This journey would be a lot more enjoyable
if we got to know each other a little more.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to get to know
your travel companion.
Percival.
Knight of the Round Table.
- Is it time?
Hello, Robin.
- Those bells I heard.
What do you think they mean?
- Nothing.
Perhaps they meant nothing.
- What if they mean something?
- You just want everything to mean something.
It rarely does.
- You know that's a lie.
- I do.
It is a lie.
Those are not my words.
- The real world's bleeding out.
Albion's sinking beneath the blood.
- Do you think we will forget who we once were?
I never heard the bells.
So, the question is,
why did you hear them?
Why only you?
- I don't know.
I, I feel
very sad.
I, I feel frail.
- Yes.
It's the boy.
He's alone and he's frightened.
And he doesn't understand what happened, or where he is.
Something is chasing him.
It's built out of sadness, it doesn't have any
bones in its body, it's empty inside.
- It's alive with melancholy.
- Yes.
Yes.
Maybe this is how I really feel.
Or maybe this is this field.
Where we are right now, this field.
- These aren't my feelings.
They don't belong to you.
They don't belong to me.
They can fuck off!
- How are we going to find the boy
if all of Albion makes us feel this lost?
- That wood.
There's something coming from inside that wood.
Hey!
Do you want some of this?
Well, let me fucking have at you, then!
- I see you.
The life.
The reasons, doubts, the triumphs.
The frailty.
I see the sadness that still haunts your flesh.
I see you through this portal,
this hole between worlds.
Albion is our landscape.
Albion is the body we share.
We're no more than the crossroads that connect us.
I'll always be here,
whenever you come looking for me.
Will you carry this memory far from today
as you reach for your ending?
Can you ever save a landscape
that exists only in your imagination?
How do you rescue a dream from destruction?
- Where do you think it's hiding?
- Depends. - On what?
- What do you think a sentient, magic object,
more powerful than any other, would hide itself as?
- How do I bloody know?
- That's what the sick king is for.
Well, he shouldn't be too hard to find.
We have history.
- Do you?
Pearl.
I've never heard of a goddess called Pearl before,
in any religion.
- My story is very old.
- Not older than mine. - How do you know?
- Why are you lying? - I'm not lying.
All right, I'm lying,
but can you imagine Percival's face
if he knew who I really was?
- So where is it, then?
You obviously know.
- You playing games, Dianna?
This little chitchat we're having.
You trying to position yourself
to find out what I know and subdue me?
Is that what this conversation's about?
I'm not your enemy.
- You're untrustworthy.
- Well,
even gods can change.
Now you're the one lying.
I thought you'd be able to tell where it is.
- Not from this vantage point.
From the darkness of the sky my light can see
almost everyone and everything.
- Let's focus on our common ground.
Albion.
You're right about the sick king.
He knows where it is.
- Where will he be? - Where he always is.
- Why, fishing, of course.
We just need to find the right lake.
- Does your father resent God?
For sending his son
and stealing all the best parts of your stories?
He still must be angry about the blatant plagiarism.
The horned goat sends his daughter,
God sends his son.
All the best parts of the richest gospel.
Even the resurrection. - Will you just stop it?
And, for the record, Sophia,
the Armageddon Gospels are still the best story ever told.
- You all make it sound like so much fun,
a little game, an escapade.
Do the Armageddon Gospels sound like a romantic quest?
It's far more dangerous than that.
It is a return of what once was.
And the resurrection of pagan divinity
won't be pleasant or life-affirming.
And your father knows it.
He knows that Albion will run red with his blood.
Maybe it's always just a silly fairy tale.
A pointless story that won't ever be finished.
He doesn't care about you.
The only thing he cares about is the green.
- Why are you here?
Nobody wanted you to come.
What is the point in you even being here?
- I came because of you.
I came because of you.
I didn't come because of the horned goat,
I came because of you.
- Then we need to go inside that wood
and stop this melancholy from spreading.
- Yes.
But I will go in first.
- Wait a minute.
Can you hear that?
- Hear what?
- Laughter.
- Yes.
I think it's coming from inside the wood.
- Sophia!
Wait!
- Hear it?
- Yeah.
- Time is dying.
There's too many moments for the seconds to contain.
Is this the lake?
- It's not the lake anymore that the lady rose from.
It's a reservoir now.
- Well, why are we seeing it?
- The ghosts of the real, they're tearing Albion apart.
- There's something important on the other side of the lake.
It's listening to us now.
- We need to find the Fisher King.
- Look.
What does he want to show us?
♪ I wish the wind ♪
♪ May never cease ♪
♪ Nor fashes in the flood ♪
♪ Till my dear sons ♪
♪ Come home to me ♪
♪ In earthly flesh and blood ♪
♪ Oh mother, dear mother ♪
♪ Don't you weep for us ♪
♪ For weeping does us harm ♪
♪ For we may suffer ♪
♪ For you dear mother ♪
♪ When you are dead and gone ♪
♪ And grass may grow over our heads ♪
♪ Cold clay over our feet ♪
♪ And every tear shed for us ♪
♪ It wets our cheek ♪
- It is so pretty.
- You give the child to me.
- You're all right, okay?
Now give me a little kiss.
Go.
- Who are you?
- Nobody.
Nobody.
- What's wrong?
Everything.
I can't live like this anymore.
I can't pretend I'm happy,
and sad, and lonely, and excited.
And, more than anything else, I can't pretend I'm normal.
It's too hard.
Nobody understands how difficult it is
to be May Queen.
I try to get along with them.
I really do.
But humankind really are the most disagreeable bunch.
They cause an argument in an empty house.
And now, I'm meant to carry on without a single sacrifice.
All I have in remembrance of my story
are a bunch of bored people smashing windows,
protesting against a God more powerful
than I'll ever hope to be.
Oh, and the Morris dances,
nerds in tights,
with their bells and their sticks that they bang
over and over.
I even have to share my special day
with a man dressed as a bush!
- I like Morris dancing.
Nothing wrong with it. - I'm sick to death of it.
Britain has forgotten what May brings.
- You're a goddess.
You need to take back control.
- I tried that.
I attempted to murder Robin Goodfellow.
- What? - You killed Robin?
- No.
Somebody else stepped in front of my blade.
- Who?
- Oh!
Take it back!
- Give it to me!
- We can help you.
But first,
you need to tell us where the Fisher King is.
- The reservoir.
Used to be a lake.
It's over the other side.
- Yeah, here you go.
Now, if you drink some of this,
it'll take the sting away.
Ease the pain you've been feeling.
- I'm glad to have met you both.
I didn't think anyone understood.
- Yes, we understand.
I understand that you should never have killed Percy.
I understand that it's impossible
for me to feel emotions
while trapped inside this frail form,
something I'll probably never get used to.
But, understand this,
even though I'm dressed as a human,
I'm still the demon I ever was.
And I can't be trusted to remain calm and sensible.
The darkness lurks within the marrow of my bones.
Waiting for something, or somebody,
to take that which belongs to me.
- What is this?
- Fairy poison.
A pleasurable descent into the underworld.
- Ah, I see.
Don't be embarrassed.
- I'm not. - Good.
I would hate for you to feel imposed upon.
It's quite some time since I was sacrificed.
I'm so glad somebody cares enough
to end this version of my story.
Please, would you help me out into the field?
- Why have you brought me here?
- Of course.
Past.
Present.
Future.
I came here so long ago.
The Bone King and his demons
believe Albion belongs to their kind alone.
It doesn't know or care
for the true history of this land.
It wants to suffocate and drown a truth
far stranger than you could imagine.
Don't let that happen, Sir Percival.
My time is up.
Today's the day I define my ending.
Allow the demons of the mundane to consume my flesh.
I hope they choke on this person of weak flesh.
And, in doing so, we save you.
And you, in turn, save Albion.
Find the Fisher King.
- I don't know where the Fisher King is.
- My daughter will take you there.
Run to the hill as fast as you can!
Climb on her back and ride her to the lake
the Fisher King hunts.
Heal the king, and the Grail will be yours.
- Ghosts?
- No.
- What are they?
- These are my brothers and sisters.
These are the cunning people of Albion.
- Maybe it's why you are here.
Is this why your father sent you?
- The giant's not asleep.
It's in a coma.
- Stop, stop. - Come on.
- Go on without me! - Get up!
Get up!
Don't you understand your own story?
You're meant to be a knight!
You don't get to give up when you're hurt!
You don't get to give up!
- Now you choose to talk.
Now you choose to talk!
- They need us, Albion needs us!
Get up, fuck you, get up!
- I guard you close.
I conjure the old salt.
I sunned here in the middle of the stream.
I stand amidst the water.
And the sunlight, and I think of nothing else.
No.
- Please stop.
Please stop.
Stop.
- Who said that, who said that?
Who said that?
Magic's forsaken me.
- No. - Magic's forsaken me.
Magic's forsaken Albion.
Magic's forsaken Albion, my father has forsaken me.
This is the hardest ritual I have ever endured.
- You say this every single time.
Every single time!
They all make you feel like this.
Yet here we are, ready for more.
They just make you to cause a pest.
And consider if what we're trying to achieve
is even possible.
They just draw attention onto the impossibility
of what we are trying to achieve in one single day.
So go, get up!
Get up and fight for the truth, get up.
Get up!
♪ All under the leaves ♪
♪ The leaves of life ♪
♪ Where I saw maidens seven ♪
♪ And one of those ♪
♪ Was Mary mild ♪
♪ Was Our King's mother In heaven ♪
♪ And she asked me ♪
♪ What was I looking for ♪
♪ All under leaves of life ♪
- Walk.
Epona's daughter.
Together, come on, we'll climb together.
- Wait.
♪ There's a rose ♪
♪ And a gentle rose ♪
♪ That grows so green ♪
- Hello.
How are you?
Oh, you don't look very well.
- I'm fine considering you just stabbed me in the guts.
- Like to finish the job? - No.
You seem angry.
I think you might be mistaking me
for someone else.
Easily done.
There's only so many faces to go around.
Perhaps this isn't even my face,
just the most appropriate form.
This is the face you chose for me.
This land is sick.
Probably dying.
How can it be expected to make everything as unique
and beautiful as it once was?
No, you're definitely not well.
You look quite sick.
- Stop pretending you're not the May Queen.
- It's not May. - Who is it, then?
- Albion's dreaming.
- Perhaps I'm her twin sister.
Would you like that?
Tell me.
Do you think you might be who you've been looking for?
- What? - You're the Fisher King.
- No.
No, I'm not.
He's a sick king, you're sick.
It's not a huge leap to assume you might be the Fisher King.
Perhaps we're all the Fisher King.
Perhaps we all emanate from the same divine source.
Perhaps all stories tell the same tale
of ritual, a perfect ritual that will save us all.
- Do you know where the Fisher King is?
- Yes.
Hiding.
- Why, why would he be hiding from you?
You seem like a perfectly nice woman.
You're like a maniac who stabs people.
- Thank you!
Are you flirting with me?
Let me ask you a simple question.
What, exactly, are you doing here
in the undertow?
- This land,
this place
is where I was happiest in a violent and miserable life.
I was loved.
And loved.
I came back here to remember the face
of the one I love,
whose bones rest with Arthur
and the Knights of the Round Table.
- That's a sad story.
I'm sorry, Percival.
- It's okay.
- How can you have any chance of
saving a graveyard of hopes and dreams?
It's impossible.
Isn't it?
- It is impossible.
- And how do you define when a ritual begins and ends?
- I don't have the answers.
- Do you think Aradia would know?
- How do you know Aradia?
- Okay.
Let me just check with her.
- How?
- I'm with her right now.
- No, you're with us.
- I am.
I'm with Aradia and Sophia at this very moment.
Do you think your ritual has already begun?
Do you think it began when you were washed up here
on the shores of Albion?
Or earlier,
when the horned god first fell in love with your mother?
Do you think it began when a human being first,
thought of you?
Imagined you?
Dreamt of you?
You see, each of you Arcadians
had a point where they came into existence.
I'm trying to learn when this ritual began
so that I can prove it's impossible.
That you can't succeed.
- It didn't begin with us.
But it didn't begin with you either.
- Tell me your name!
And I will help you learn both about your beginning,
and your ending!
- Betty.
They are just as confused as you are.
I think you and I have everything we came for.
Let me show you.
Thank you.
It's so beautiful.
- Pearl?
Pearl!
- Why wasn't I invited to your ritual?
I would like to be an Arcadian.
I'm quite hurt.
Rude.
It would be nice to be involved
in the plans to remake Albion,
especially since it now belongs to me.
- Percy, get up.
Step away.
- I want you to trust me.
That way you'll really suffer.
- Percival, get up!
- You can't trust her.
She's the real enemy.
- I trust her now, no matter what,
no matter what she once was.
- What?
- Nothing stays the same.
- Pearl tells me you came here to find the Grail.
Oh, and I forgot to mention.
Your friends, they found
where the Fisher King was hiding.
- Where?
Where?
- It won't tell me.
But it knows you stole the child out of its jaws.
So it has decided to consume
you and the other Arcadians instead.
It hurts.
I thought I was dead.
Then I wasn't.
Am I a puppet?
- Easy to say.
- Always.
- What is it?
- Hmm.
It thinks it's a god.
But really, it's something much worse than God.
- I have a gift.
I have a gift if it stops feeding.
- It accepts.
But first, it wants to hurt you.
So then it knows you will suffer.
And then it will be able to feed.
- Sorry. - Oh, what are you doing?
Don't. - So sorry.
- Let go of me!
You're hurting me.
- I'm so sorry.
- Nothing makes sense down here in the dirt.
- You failed.
The ritual
is incomplete.
- I need you to help me.
I need,
I need you to help, I need you to find them.
I need-
- I can't leave them.
I, I can't leave them.
- They have a choice.
You have a choice, you can
continue the marking and save them all,
or you can stay here
and tend to their graves for eternity.
- Will you tell me about the Grail?
- The closer I got to it,
the harder it became to keep track of the truth.
John Dee used a black obsidian scrying mirror
to foretell the future.
Some books insist that nine masses are said
before any foretelling take place.
And the cunning folk of England,
they practice all manner of augury.
Aye, I do not read the flight pattern of birds.
I do not believe the greatest tool of divination
to be either this scrying mirror
or the divining rod.
The majority of the 43 muscles in the human face
are controlled by the seventh cranial nerve,
also known as the facial nerve.
This nerve emerges from the cerebral cortex
and exits the human skull just before the ears
where it splits into five primary branches:
the mandibular, the zygomatic,
the temporal, the buccal, and cervical.
The human face is the greatest tool of divination.
There is a face for every possible future.
Over eight billion human faces haunt the planet Earth,
all in varying shape, size, and color.
You only need look into the eyes of an old man
to see the past.
Huh.
You see, visions and prophecies
are screened inside the human skull,
which is a dollhouse.
You see, every grimace, every smile, every scowl,
is a portal into the underworld.
Now,
answer me this,
who is it that faces the Grail?
- Every face.
All of them.
- The Grail cannot be quantified.
It can only be discussed in twilight language.
- Can I see your face?
- What do you see?
Help me understand.
- It's complex.
Hard to experience.
It hurts.
There's more pain contained in a single beat of your heart
than I've experienced in my entire life.
- I have been present
for every emotion
that each human heart has experienced.
- That's why you fish.
You've learned to live without the memories.
Day by day they frayed.
One by one.
So you fish.
And it helps.
The pain heals.
If you were forced to choose
what memory to experience again,
you'd pick the first moment
that you were in the presence of the Grail.
- Am I sick?
Tell me.
- The lake doesn't want you.
The sea won't take you home.
- Such a beautiful day.
Isn't it?
I'm so tired.
Can we rest here for a while?
Why are you crying?
- Do you want me to heal you?
- Father!
Help me!
Hello.
There's a field, there's a field.
The boy, the boy came.
Show us the way.
We have to keep up.
- Oh, I'll make sure I do.
- I have it.
- Where are you taking us, Robin?
- Look.
- Thank you.
- What's happening to you?
- I'm going on a journey to somewhere new.
Don't be afraid.
I'll always watch over you and make sure that you are safe.
Every breath is a gift.
Remember,
fight until the last gasp.
- The Bone King speaks of you often.
It talks about you,
how much he loves your little ways.
Your weaknesses, your strengths.
He's the friend you never knew you had.
He visits you while you're sleeping.
When you feel lost or alone, he creeps into your heart.
If you ever feel in pain or suffering,
he'll gallop down into the depths of your heart.
He sows little seeds of doubt.
Plows and cultivates the landscape of your emotions.
And then watches as those fractures of stress
grow into great trees of doom.
The Bone King is England.
The Bone King is bigotry.
The Bone King is fear, loss, doubt, grief.
The Bone King is the sound of your dreams dying.
♪ Cold is the hand ♪
♪ Upon my heart ♪
♪ Now is the time ♪
♪ When we must part ♪
♪ My brethren ♪
♪ Now hear my cries ♪
♪ Forever now ♪
♪ A darkness veils the sky ♪
♪ Travel the thought upon the road ♪
♪ Every path ♪
♪ Must lead to death ♪
♪ The wheel of nature ♪
♪ Is just ♪
♪ And every living thing ♪
♪ Must turn to dust ♪
♪ After the summons ♪
♪ To the tune ♪
♪ The solemn tone ♪
♪ Leads to the gloom ♪
♪ Death calls ♪
♪ And I must away ♪
♪ For I am but a servant ♪
♪ And must obey ♪
♪ Near o'er the brink ♪
♪ I feel ♪
♪ This you know ♪
♪ This is death's will ♪
♪ I am down here ♪
♪ For his rule ♪
♪ But for my last ♪
♪ In this body ♪
♪ Little more ♪
- Rise up, Albion.
Rise up, Albion the mongrel.
Rise up, Albion the giant.
Rise up, Green Man.
Rise up, Arthur.
Rise up, Finn.
Rise up, Merlin.
Rise up, Fay.
Rise up, the spirits of the Green.
Rise up, Albion.
Open the borderland.
Open the Wyrd port.
Welcome the odd and other to these shores.
Tonight,
the giant wakes.