elaborately helmeted and armored in some copper-colored metal, wielding a large spear and running at them down the road. The warrior punches their car off the road and down a wooded slope. After frantically checking that she is unhurt, Hellboy leaves Alice in the upended car to fight the warrior who while fighting announces himself as Nimue's champion, the Blood Queen having recently murdered Queen Mab and Dagda's elf retainer. Meanwhile, Gruagach flees the growing storm elsewhere in the countryside and trips over the grave of Merlin, whose image he begs for mercy, eliciting the reply, "No mercy for you, pig." Merlin recounts his seduction and entombment by Nimue, and denounces Gruagach for helping her to end the world. He reveals that Nimue killed Mab in order to create the champion who is now fighting Hellboy and is revealed to be her hedgehog servant from The Wild Hunt transformed by a daubing in Mab's golden blood. Merlin shows Gruagach a post-apocalyptic future vision of the Ogdru Hem treading ruined cities, and curses him with eternal life "until the world ceases to turn" that he may see the world he helped create come to pass. Back in the darkened church the undisturbed fourth tomb still begs forgiveness as a crowned knight, resembling King Arthur as portrayed in The Wild Hunt, appears to Bill who falls to his knees in prayer. Alice throws Excalibur to Hellboy who, distracted, is impaled on the spear of Nimue's champion but merely walks up the spear to deliver a sweeping death blow with the sword. Dying, the champion warns Hellboy of a secret (which he has learned from Mab through her blood) that Nimue is becoming "a thing not seen since the beginning of the world." Once he reverts, dead, to his hedgehog form, Hellboy follows the sword which has flown some yards away in its final swing, and is led to discover an unusually picturesque and isolated pub with an image of the Holy Grail on its sign. Hellboy and Alice are forced to enter the pub, the woman tending bar seemingly unfazed by Hellboy's appearance but only claims to find him familiar. Hellboy nurses his tea watching a TV news report with BPRD's Kate Corrigan giving a statement on the towering California Urgo Hem from BPRD: King of Fear (and subsequent issues), as he sorrowfully relives a conversation from his childhood on the New