Arthurian Cultivation

Guiding Star, cast Your light through faithful hands,

Harden our resolve and steady our blows.

Let false flames gutter and heretic shadows fall.

By Your rays alone, we strike, and are made righteous.

“Fuck,” I swore as the two Knights began to glow. I could feel the power radiating off them. Something shifted in the air. The glamour that’d until now felt like any other cultivators’ now tasted of that oily corruption I was long familiar with. My spine chilled, to think they’d found a way to hide their very nature.

The Knights fought with fresh fervour. Our brief moment where we led the battle was lost.

Maeve tried to break from the Squires to attack the Priests, only to be blasted back by slices of wind. She slashed through them, but that pause was enough for the Squires to catch her and one even managed to jam their spear into the joints of her armour. Though she made the Squire pay, slicing through the spear and leaving him scrambling for a blade.

“You should run, Taliesin, you should outpace them,” Bors shouted. He had a cut on the side of his face. The last time I’d seen Bors wounded was in the Fae Realm, and it sent a bolt of cowardly fear churning through me. Not enough to make me run, though.

“No way. I’m not leaving you here. Besides, who says they don’t have someone in reserve?” I called back as I gathered power for a new curse, and tried to work out how I could shift the balance of the battle.

Arthur and what I now assumed was a Sacrifice Paladin were still going at it. Their fight escalated as their gifts clashed, feeding into their shared anger. The prince’s moon glamour was a great counter to his opponent’s blade glamour, but the Paladin’s infused blade consumed all his attention. A single mistake and the glowing weapon would slice through even empowered armour.

My use of smoke was limited, given the wind-gifted Priest who kept shredding anything I pulled up within seconds of me constructing it. My curse techniques, while powerful, took time I struggled to find to build up, not to mention the prayers seemed to counteract some of their power.

Either our opponents were very lucky, or they knew who we were and had plans to counteract us. It’d explain how they’d snuck up on us. My smoke was one thing, but avoiding Bors’ earth sense was another.

I had to find an edge. Something they weren’t prepared for.

And as the prayer started up again, I realised I had something that they wouldn’t be expecting. I pulled out a vial from my ring, a burst of ash hiding what I was doing. The answering burst of wind came a moment later, and with it my idea solidified. I couldn’t create distractions that lasted any more than a second or two, but did I need more?

I gathered up a dense ball of smoke right behind me. Once the power had built, I released it from containment and blanketed all about me in a pall of smoke that stretched out all around me. A perfect distraction if I was about to flee.

Then, against all rational sense, I used the cover to dart closer to Arthur and the Paladin.

A moment later a gust of wind tore my cover apart, but by then my plan was in motion, and I’d hurled the glass vial right between the warring pair.

The wind user panicked, spotting the attack too late, and with his ally in place he hesitated just long enough that the projectile sailed through the divide between us and crashed into the Priest leading the prayer.

Alchemy was not all poisons and healing brews. My mastery of perfume and monster lures had given me some ideas. One of which had given me the notion of creating something that could be used to help us with one of our greatest frustrations, hunting down bandits when they scrambled, by marking them with a notable scent that even a human could follow.

The vial I’d just thrown was a failed experiment. In my attempt to make an odour that we could reliably track I might’ve gotten a little overzealous with the potency. It wasn’t even a bad smell, just extremely citrusy. It had still gotten me banned from camp until the combined effort of Gaz and Gawain’s water gifts had scrubbed me raw.

An overreaction, in my opinion. I mean, it only took four hours before everything stopped tasting extra zesty.

I watched it explode on the chanting Priest’s chest. He paused, showing remarkable confidence. He was clearly expecting some poison or acid and yet didn’t pause his chant. That might’ve been my choice if I possessed options with enough potency to threaten a cultivator of his rank. He smirked when the expected pain didn’t come and continued his chant.

“Cleanse this by the light of the eugh, blegh,” the Priest began, trying to chant something to ward off the assumed poison, before the smell reached him and he began to choke and tear at his clothes. The other wind Priest fired a blanket of wind, trying to disperse the ‘poison’, which only spread it across the battlefield.

Everyone shuddered as the smell spread. Even at a distance it was like someone was pouring lemon juice into my nostrils.

I grinned, and began a fresh tune. My fingers started to dance on the lute.

With the prayer interrupted the battle shifted. The glowing power round the Paladins faded. Bors, who’d been getting pushed back, slammed a rock-covered fist into his Paladin. Crystal formations held the stone together as it slammed into sturdy metal. He didn’t need my help. My fingers still strummed and, in the belly of my lute, I—

I fed it power from the chest, from my fat, full cloak, pushing power into the lute as I picked my next target.

Arthur, from whom I could see blood dripping, roared. His eyes narrowed as rage began to overtake him. The Sacrifice Paladin’s relentless assault finally interrupted. Both were in danger but holding, their fight so frenetic that I didn’t dare unleash something for fear of it hitting my ally. Still, the power grew under my fingers.

My eyes settled on the last fight. If Maeve was free we could win this. She’d taken the brief citrus shock as an opportunity to cut down one of the Squires who’d been harassing her. The remaining pair were ragged, their amplified cultivation spluttering and failing without the prayer to enforce them. She nearly gutted another, but the Priest sent a blade of wind her way.

If I could free her of the Squires, we would have this battle won.

“Your hollow faith will not save your flesh.”

“Zealots who glk—”

My song was interrupted as I felt all the air dragged away from me. I gasped on nothing. The wind Priest bastard had taken my idea. He’d pulled the air from the world around me. It was a glamour-intense technique, especially at distance. He couldn’t hold it for long. It was a gamble that interrupting me would be worth it.

Lucky bastard.

The power screamed. My lute was full of death glamour and through beginning to invoke its power I’d given it a path out, but failed to do more than shape the most rudimentary instruction of ‘go somewhere else’.

Even as I choked, I held the power in place, my fingers dancing to contain it with the opening bars of a funeral dirge. Yet I could feel that wasn’t enough. I couldn’t get back in control. The power wanted out. Before me were allies and enemies in equal measure, and if I unleashed this power it would pour forth like a wave.

So I jumped up and forward with every ounce of athleticism I had. A foolish thing to do in a battle with multiple opponents who could send all manner of attacks your way, and yet it was the only option.

I went clear over Arthur and the Sacrifice Paladin, neither noticing me, so locked in their rage. Bors and the metal Paladin were wrestling, both having lost their weapons. Bors wrapped his armour in hexagons of stone, while the Paladin’s armour grew spikes and tendrils of steel sought to find his weakness.

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I saw the wind cultivator grin and prepare an attack, only to take a glowing knife of blade glamour to the chest. Maeve had found her opening to nail the Priest, her ghostly attack unaffected by his swirling wind armour.

My breath returned, but it was too late to do much else than aim the power. I pointed the body of the lute at the two Priests and then slammed my fingers across the strings in a discordant note.

“Follow your star, it’s already set.” Air returned. I managed to impart a touch of guidance, just enough to send it forth at the two Priests.

The power screamed out of the lute. It wasn’t guided and it didn’t have my full will behind it, but it rolled towards them and the pair frantically dodged. The wind Priest was too slow thanks to his injury. He screamed and locked up, his pallor turning pale, his skin growing flaky and broken, his eyes rolling back into his head.

Then a pair of glowing daggers slammed into his throat.

I landed near the trees and turned to find where the last Priest had hidden. He wouldn’t hide for long. This close, the smell was eye-watering.

Behind me I heard a shout of triumph, and a scream cut off. I could sense death glamour explode in the air from the wind Priest. It marked the end of the power that had been spreading through the two Paladins, and I saw Bors slam the metal cultivator away with a huge slab of stone. While whatever power that was holding the Berserker together flickered and faltered, and I could hear him groan with pain.

Fresh breaths of death glamour battered my senses and I knew Maeve had slain the two Squires she’d been handling.

We had our momentum back. I began to retreat. The Priest was an unknown. I had no idea what glamour he had at his disposal.

Unfortunately I was about to learn.

I had just enough sense to smell an oppressive wave of citrus coming from behind me, and with it a sense of wrongness wrapping around me.

I blinked, my senses confused. Beneath my feet were flagstones. Before me was a hall I’d left long ago. I cringed. I knew this place. A hall I’d left behind when I escaped, a place of waking nightmares. Paintings depicting the Ray of Bonds loomed over me, draped between windows of stained glass with so much red featured that the room seemed drenched in blood.

A shadowy silhouette I knew well loomed over me. A painfully thin man leaning on a cane. He looked weak, but it was all a ruse, a lie like so much in this place. A silhouette of the Harkley Patriarch leaned over me.

“You claim this is my grandson? What is your worth, boy?”

I was thin, weak and so very afraid. I was back in the arms of the very people my mother had given everything to keep me from. My heart was clamped in a vice, my throat was dry, and my ears pounded.

And everything smelt of citrus.

That wasn’t right.

I felt the glamour shift, familiar glamour, dream glamour. My mind shifted, and I tore at everything. I slammed my intent into the nonsense. The world dissolved into rainbows of ash. The columns became trees, the silhouette of my ‘jailer’ becoming nought more than the corpse of the wind Priest.

“Heretic scum,” a voice by my ear said, and a weight shifted on my back.

Then pain exploded. A blade plunged into my armpit. With it was foreign, ugly glamour. I jerked, jumping away, only to be yanked back by the strap.

My vision resolved, just in time for me to dodge an attack from a sickly yellow blade that came for my throat. I slid out of the strap, but kept my good hand wrapped round the leather.

The Priest stood opposite me, hand locked on the leather strap of the chest. Eyes full of hate.

The bastard had hit me with dream glamour, and then poisoned me.

The dream glamour and their obsession with the box had saved me. Wounding someone under the influence of dream glamour was a certain way to shake them from it. He must’ve been relying on me staying under while he grabbed the chest.

My wound boiled. I could feel glamour seeping in, trying to spread through me. I threw much of my will into clamping down on it, ensuring it didn’t spread.

We glared at each other for a split second, before I manipulated the ash in my knife to slice through his end of the leather strap and retreat towards my allies.

Even that action hurt. Just splitting my attention for a moment had let the poison spread. My wound burned and I rolled back, drenching myself in smoke glamour to lose my attacker. The summoning of it wasn’t my delicate shaping, but rather pumping my power into a chaotic cloud.

My ruse was somewhat ruined as I let out a scream of pain as I rolled over on my wounded arm and realised that the knife was still in there.

Hands gripped at nothing. I’d left my lute behind, my fingers unable to grasp it. Maeve appeared beside me, her armour battered and her breathing heavy.

“Poison user,” I choked out.

As I fumbled through my ring, looking for some manner of cleansing agent and antidotes, I noticed the sounds of battle had waned.

Our two groups had now separated. Three cultists stood before us, the Paladins at the ready. The Berserker showed more control over his gift than most if he was able to hold back. He was wounded all over with blood dripping off his body, and yet didn’t seem diminished. The metal Paladin wasn’t so heavily armoured. It seemed Bors had torn literal chunks off him.

The poison Priest stood just behind them, his grey hair ruffled and his chest bare as he’d torn off his clothes.

Bors and Maeve readied their weapons, protecting me, and I could see their armour was dented, small wounds leaked blood, and they were breathing heavily. Arthur was behind me. I could hear him grinding his teeth, his breaths short and terse, as he struggled to get his gift of the heart under control.

“Give us the box and we’ll see about an antidote,” the metal-covered Paladin spoke first. “You might win this, but he’ll be dead if you do.”

“Only way you’re getting that chest is if I stuff it up your arse,” Bors replied.

“You heretics don’t even know what you have. Every second it is in your possession is a sin against the Star,” the Priest chastised. His voice was bitter, kind of like the lemon he was battling through to speak.

“Doesn’t mean we want you getting it,” Bors followed up.

I clamped my arm down hard to stem the blood loss. I had removed the blade. It wasn’t the best advice normally, but given it was coated with poison, it was better out than in.

“You are wounded, and inferior. You are in our array, none will come to help you. He will die, and for what? A chest you don't even know the contents of?” the Priest said, and it made me want to punch him. I blinked as I caught up with what he’d said. They knew we hadn’t opened it.

They had been spying on us.

I found this hilarious, the idea of them following us and listening in our inane conversations, and only stopped myself from laughing by chugging down another antidote. That was not a good sign. I was turning feverish, but kept enough of my mind to hide my movements behind Bors’ legs. The antidote’s effects wouldn’t be instantaneous, but it should help stymie the flow of poison within. I didn’t know what the damn poison was, so couldn’t pick out anything specific to counter it.

I noticed both groups were still eyeballing each other.

Everyone knew this wasn’t a genuine discussion. Neither group could let the other live. This was a temporary pause while both groups tried to find an edge, while gambling that their opponents wouldn’t find one of their own.

I didn’t think I’d be helping. My vision was going black and it was all I could do to conjure one last cleansing brew and pour it onto the wound. My breaths were laboured and thin.

“Seems like this is important to you?” Maeve probed, her voice imperious and cold.

“We are guided by the Ray’s light. It shows us the path to infidels who deserve our ire for daring to lay their hands upon blessed artefacts,” the Priest growled.

I groaned, and felt both groups tense. I was, in many ways, the deciding factor of this temporary truce. The Divine cultivators were trying to leverage my wounds, hoping that the poison would take me out of the fight, and at the very least wanted to ensure my companions were limited as they were forced to protect me.

The Round Table was hoping I could stabilise. Trying to drag things out, and hope that reinforcements would come our way.

I didn’t have the breath to explain the only way I was coming back to this fight was through a burst of flames. An unhelpful thought popped up. What if the poison remained in my body after a resurrection?

That probably wouldn’t happen, right?

“Look, you don’t want to die, we just want the box. Make a trade and we’re done here. We’ll leave and you can go on doing more heresy,” the metal Paladin spoke up. His voice was flat and neutral, like a trader discussing the cost of some supplies, not lives. My sight was growing dark, but even as my consciousness thinned I had enough awareness left to be surprised to sense that he wasn’t lying.

The Priest shot him a look of disgust.

“I have a task and killing them is not it.” The man shrugged. “No need to stick my neck out.”

The man had to be from the Ray of Protection with that mentality. They were distinctly mercenary and valued their lives highly. I heard the other Paladin begin to growl. With the heart gift he had to be from the Ray of Sacrifice, and they tended to be the opposite, going all in on whatever task they were given. I bet they didn’t get along at all. I giggled to myself at the image of the pair of them arguing.

“Well, I for one—” the voice kept going, but I couldn’t make out the words any more.

Then I felt something shift. My senses picked up a new source of power. Great gusts of wind and an aggrieved whinny descended upon dazzling rays of light.

My eyes swam. A blur was all I saw as the Paladin of Protection lunged for me. The scream of the Paladin of Sacrifice echoed as he charged Arthur. Overhead I saw a valkyrie descend.

It was then that I blacked out.