Arthurian Cultivation

What had been a peaceful Autumn day exploded into carnage.

The first terrifying thing was that half of them were coming at me. There were only about twenty paces between our two groups and they were the greater threat, yet a disproportionate number of them surged towards me. The group were in nondescript armour, worn from travel, and with grey cloaks that showed no crest or other sign of affiliation. Like a group of clean bandits.

As they rushed forward my mind slowed, drinking in the information.

Two Knights charged forward, one tall and lean, the other squat and broad. They tore up the turf trying to get closer to me. Around them were six Squires equipped with spears. Enough to be a genuine threat to me despite the difference in our cultivation.

They all had weapons out and were moving with purpose. There was a cohesion that was lacking from the groups we’d tackled so far, and my mind was ringing all manner of alarm bells as they closed the distance. This didn’t seem like any normal bandit attack. They’d even left the horses alone, who were bolting down the river away from the fight, despite them easily being some of the most valuable things we owned.

I backed away, adjusting the strap that held the ghastly box onto my back. I dragged up a wall of smoke from the campfire, desperately trying to give myself space. A quick burst of smoke and my lute was shifted into a sword, and my outfit switched to its harlequin armour form.

I ducked sideways as another javelin hummed blindly through the smoke. I ran towards the rest of the group under the cover. I only got a couple of steps before the squat one of the pair tore through the smoke, followed by a blast of wind from behind him that shredded the rest of the smoke. He had a heavy shield and carried a mace. I dived beneath a swing, throwing myself forward as he tried to barrel into me.

Beneath me the ground rippled and a wall of earth rose to try and trip him, but he kept his footing, though it slowed his charge.

That gave me the moment I needed to close the gap and reunite with the others. My Knights had their weapons drawn and their expressions set.

I was baffled. Who would attack us? Why were they attacking us? The numbers didn’t add up. All of us were Iron ranked, and they only had two Knights. According to my senses, neither Knight felt particularly far into Iron either, maybe a bit above where the others were, but not by much, and both of them should’ve been able to sense our power and know that even with a few Squires to support them it wasn’t enough to—

“These bandits are getting bold,” Bors muttered.

“The tall one has the gift of heart. I can sense it,” Arthur growled, his own face growing tight and grim as their cultivation clashed. The anger on the battlefield fuelled his emotion-driven cultivation.

“I’ll kill you fuckers!” the man screamed, and I had flashbacks to fighting Frothy while fleeing with Lance. This man was more Berserker than Heart.

Our groups clashed. The other side had the momentum and the numbers, we had more Iron ranks and talent.

To my surprise the squat Knight drove Bors back. While he was barely two-thirds Bors’ height, he made up for it in breadth. His armour was heavy and seemed to flow over his form, and I got a taste of metal glamour off of him. Bors’ blade glanced off the reinforced armour.

Some of the Squires picked away at Maeve, a trio of them staying in tight formation while using their spears to avoid her dancing blade. Their fight was punctuated by blasts of glamour as they launched technique after technique at her. They had impressive strength, likely on the cusp of Iron themselves, and were no doubt using up their glamour quickly, hoping they could hold out long enough for one of the Knights to win their battle and aid them.

They could hold out for less than a minute at the rate they were burning through their power.

Maeve’s blade danced in response. Even with all three giving their all, she still weaved through them, striking hits here and there. Still she was at a disadvantage, as blade glamour lacked the ability to project techniques far from her blade. The ghostly daggers she threw lacked the power to penetrate their armour. Against a less talented opponent she could sneak them through some opening. However, the Squires’ armour was of good quality, and they worked well together to deny her the opportunity.

My observations were interrupted as Arthur shoved me back, stepping between me and the snarling Berserker with a roar of his own. In that moment, I truly appreciated the wonders of cultivators’ armour.

Knights gave up some mobility—and a measure of endurance—but their cultivation let them infuse their armour with glamour. Done right, it would ignore glancing blows, and if they flooded it with glamour, turn aside even heavy strikes that could shear through their enhanced flesh.

A fact demonstrated as Arthur took the hit—halting blade and body—that could’ve cleaved me in two. His armour held, and only a grunt noted the hit. The blade, which had been glowing with the Berserker’s blade gift, was fired back by a burst of Moon Glamour, his own power turned against him. His blade screeched and I saw blade glamour flicker across it. Yet that only further enraged the Berserker.

“Take them down, secure the target,” the squat Knight snapped out an order. His voice was sharp, cultured and authoritative. Another sign that this wasn’t the usual rabble.

The Squires were moving to surround us. We were pinned against the river and the rocks beyond, the only way out was through them or deeper into the forests. I tried to send up a blast of smoke to signal our friends, only to see my glamour impact and dissipate across some form of Array that encircled us.

When had that gone up? What bandits had the knowledge to make Arrays? Let alone deploy them so artfully that we didn’t notice?

This didn’t make sense, none of it did.

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The battle turned into a frenzy.

A deafening boom crashed between us and the space lit up with different powers. Earth shook, Maeve’s blade started to dance, and water crashed. I fouled the air with smoke, targeting the Squires to foul their senses, but bursts of air glamour were coming from somewhere which batted away my power.

Maeve and Bors were fighting the squat Knight and his Squires. The four Bronze cultivators were taking wounds but were sending out blasts of glamour. Fire, Ice and Wind blasted chaotically from them, while the metal cultivator kept Bors pinned down. Their endurance was incredible. They’d burnt through so much glamour to suppress Maeve that they should be limp on the ground, their hearths flickering and dead from being overused, and yet they fought on.

The Berserker was trying to get to me. His rage seemed locked on to me, and his mouth set into a grimace. Arthur was slicing chunks off him, and the two Squires he was with kept finding openings to attack me or Arthur.

I was at the back, locked in place. I didn’t like this sensation. I should be able to turn the tide. I was an Iron ranked cultivator. My hand closed on my blade and I looked to where I could aid, but my skills were stymied.

Blasts of glamour hunted me. Wind whipped at any Smoke construct I created, and I struggled to find the space to unleash my death glamour. Unable to collect myself for a curse.

My gut said to run, not to abandon my fellows but to give them the space to focus on the battle without need to protect me. Yet I hesitated. Nothing, not the attack, the power of the Squires, the Array, none of it made sense. If I fled what other surprises awaited me?

What in all the Unseelie was going on?

I felt a shift in the low-lying smoke that hugged the floor just behind me, and I dodged as a Squire emerged out of their cloak of shadow glamour, the blade whistling behind my back. I spun and lashed out with pure strength, carving a shrieking line into the armour on his chest and sending him tumbling back. The bastard, though, had enforced his armour and the blow was far from fatal.

The attack hadn’t been at my neck, or some other vital area. It had been targeting the strap holding the chest to my back.

“They’re after the chest,” I shouted.

“Ah fuck, that’s not good,” was all I heard from Bors, before a fresh explosion of glamour between the fighters rang out.

The tempo of the battle only increased. My fellows were being slowed, the other Knights seemed more than their match. Their strikes powerful, their glamour plentiful. I needed to help. I spun and carved through the lone shadow cultivator, dancing over them with a flip before driving my blade into a crack in the armour at the back of the knee.

The two spear Squires who’d been harassing Arthur began to follow, and I had to dodge a bolt of ice one flung. The shadow Squire threw himself behind them and uncorked a Brew. I raised my blade and stared them down.

Their gazes were set, their morale strong. They prepared for a duel.

I would have to disappoint. In the panic of battle I may have switched to my blade, but now I had a bit of space, I remembered where my strengths lay, and most importantly what I was carrying on my back.

A quick burst of smoke and I had my lute out.

Whoever these bastards were, they should never have attacked a death cultivator with a box of pure death glamour on his back.

A quick strum, and my lute hungrily sucked up the radiating dark energy. I even fed it power from my cloak, the damn thing was getting glutted with power. The once raggedy thing was now a thick, velvet-lined piece of midnight, its full power brought out from the constant saturation of glamour.

The two strangely powerful Squires were joined by their limping comrade as they tried to pin me down, but I had shaken off the shock of the ambush and was back to my spring-heeled self. I danced about, avoiding their attacks, and gathered my power.

The lingering shroud of death glamour that exuded from the chest was something I’d become, if not comfortable, at least familiar with. Just like with my lute, I let it build up and then channelled it with my words and intent, slamming my will into the three Squires who were working around Arthur to attack me.

Thieves of this blighted, burdened chest,

Feel the hoarded death that gives no rest.

Take what I hold, take all its blighted power.

Know your own ending in this cursed hour.

The power rushed from me and slammed into all three of them. They faltered but didn’t fall. It was as if some force shielded them from the full effect of the curse. A stumble, though, was all that was needed to change their fate in the frenetic combat. Arthur dived around the Berserker he was fighting to carve into the Squire’s unresisting body, opening up a bloody furrow. Before his true opponent roared a challenge and forced him back.

I attacked as well. I still had the knife Maeve had got me, the one with an array that let the blade heat up to start fires, and whose hilt I’d filled with ash of monsters I’d slain with my death glamour. It wasn’t something I’d used often, but I’d been practising with it under Kay’s orders that I needed some backup weapons.

It wasn’t a strong attack and would never punch through armour. Against any competent defence it was at most a distraction, but against a weakened Bronze rank I trusted it would be enough. With my full will behind it, I sent the short blade hurtling through the air at the spearman’s visor. He was just aware enough to bring up a thin barrier of ice, but it wasn’t enough. The red-hot blade, runes empowered by my superior cultivation, rendered his ice to steam. His head snapped back and he collapsed, and with that the tide of battle shifted.

Yet I still felt something was off as I closed in on the last Squire.

I had unleashed this power a few times over the last months, and against anyone who wasn’t Iron rank, the technique was crippling if not outright lethal. Had they prepared some kind of counter specifically for me? Or was it the chest they were afraid of?

I yanked out the knife from the Squire, but the shadow-gifted was already on the move. Even shivering, and filled with visions of the inevitability of death, they managed to flee. Their sword slapped aside my knife, disappearing back into the trees they’d emerged from with their shadow glamour.

“Damned Witch! Stop the heathen!” one of the Knights called, and my blood chilled. Knights never called people heathens. That was a word that belonged to the cultists.

My fears were confirmed when I heard rhythmic prayer coming from the bushes, and I looked up to see two more cultivators in travelling robes and holding ritual implements. One, with grey hair and the solemn face of an older man, had the look of command about him. The other was younger and had eyes like a fox, cruel and prideful. He was wreathed in tendrils of dancing air. There was the accursed wind cultivator who’d been foiling me.

These had to be Priests. The clergy were the cultists’ counter to Witches. They focused less on combat and more on Arrays and ritualistic aspects of cultivation. They used prayers as a form of counter-curse, lending their power to strengthen and enhance their allies.

These were the ones responsible for the Array sealing us in, and it explained the unnatural strength of our foes.

Now I understood why they'd attacked. The Priests were both Iron as well, and between them, the Arrays, the Squires, the group was our equal if not our superior. They began to close the distance between us. One of them, the damnable air cultivator who’d been disrupting my smoke, started a long-range assault. Techniques slammed into us.

From the other I heard a prayer start up.