cured with the antidote. The mistress of the castle appears and is revealed to be Morgan le Fay. Meanwhile, the Queen of Blood receives a deputation from the dwarf-like King of Jutland. She rejects the king's gift of a crown and orders the king's tearful craftsman-ambassador to return home and murder the king, and to feed his heart to the forge to make her a helmet suitable of her new incarnation as Badbh, Macha, and Mor-rioghain, the triple goddess of war. As Alice recovers from her poisoning, Morgan le Fay tells Hellboy that his witch mother (whose name she reveals to have been Sarah Hughes, his demon father's having been Azzael), was the last in a line of female descendants, all witches, of Mordred, her son by King Arthur. This means that Hellboy is Mordred's first male descendant, and "rightful king of Britain". While conveying Alice to a sickbed, she identifies Hellboy with the Red Dragon of Britain that Merlin identified under Vortigern's Tower. She then takes Hellboy to a garden pool where the sword Excalibur floats embedded in a stone. She reveals that the Queen of Blood is the witch Nimue, who seduced and stole Merlin's powers, using them to commune with the Ogdru Jahad. Nimue's coven feared her growing madness and killed her. Morgan insists that to defeat Nimue, Hellboy must draw Excalibur and thereby summon an undead army of British noblemen (many of whom seemingly hang in full armor from the branches of a great tree growing through her castle). As Morgan describes Nimue's bloodlust, Hellboy relives the conclusion of his fight with the giants, in which his own bloodlust (using a makeshift sword), had apparently caused him, in panels accompanied by quotes from the Book of Revelation, to briefly settle into his destined role as Beast of the Apocalypse. He awakens from his memories and Morgan leaves him, dejected and shaken, alone with the sword. Walking through the castle Hellboy broods on the situation. In Alice's room he briefly sees a ghostly Vasilisa (last seen in Darkness Calls) who warns caution before disappearing. Alice awakens and urges him to take the sword, telling him of a dream she has just had in which King Arthur in his tomb explained her life is bound to the sword and that she will be "first to see the new king with his crown." Later, Hellboy hears a howling and