Arthurian Cultivation

We moved through room after room. The deeper we got, the less nature intruded and the more whole the castle became. It was like we were travelling through time. Some rooms even still had aged tapestries hanging on the walls and dusty furniture waiting for guests.

It seemed anything of value was gone. We didn't know whether that was down to Nermil, adventurers like Kay's sect, or some act of the Green Knight when he destroyed this place.

And this place was destroyed, no matter that it might still be standing.

I could taste the death glamour in the air. I could feel the oppressive weight of glamour. The sense that we were tolerated but not welcome. No human should be able to find peace in these halls.

I had thought that Vermald was the height of insanity, but if Nermil lived here he could easily take that crown.

His sanity was further in question due to his traps.

They were as devious as they were plentiful. We were moving slowly, finding everything from acid-spitting statues to a cantilevered pickaxe that swung in at crotch height and then exploded.

We had all learned our own survival techniques. Sephy had her shield up constantly. Tristan moved forward with a long vine stretched out before him like a dog leash with no dog to probe the floor, working with Maeve, who would throw her knife constructs at anything even vaguely suspicious. Bors had become very good at raising earth walls.

I'd got really good at hiding behind Bors.

That and stretching out my smoke. With the air in the corridor mostly still I easily noticed unnatural shifts in airflow. The pervasive dream glamour that our prey had added to hide his death machines was slowly getting easier to push through.

Still it didn't help when the trigger was far from the trap itself.

Tristan's vine was moving about when it touched a spot. I felt a flare of glamour, both Tristan and I shouting a warning. There was a soft thump and then nothing.

“Did it misfire?” I heard Sephy ask.

“Oh I don't like this.” Bors rumbled.

“Perhaps, but…” Tristan said. “Do you hear that?”

“Sounds like buzzing.” I said. The noise was all wrong though, far too sharp a sound.

“Oh shit!” Bors yelled, pointing down the hall.

Round the corner a swarm of enraged insects appeared. An enraged cloud of red-banded hornets, the body of each one easily the size of my thumb. The noise of their wings was like the shriek of metal on metal a thousand times a second.

They carried hate and had metal glamour with them. Vicious snapping heads and long stingers. A rock from Bors, a lead pellet from Sephy, a knife from Maeve. All of them punched through the swarm, barely thinning their numbers.

“Rust Hornets! They'll chew through armour and flesh!” Sephy shouted.

“Fall back!” Maeve started to run, but Tristan shouted out.

“No, don't. The corridors are heavily trapped. That’s what he wants.”

“Gather together. My smoke!” I cried, and set about breaking out the alchemicals from my ring. I threw down a vial.

“Take a deep breath.” I called, and then got to work.

The alchemical compound exposed to the air immediately began to combust, throwing out a billowing cloud of thick smog that I grabbed with my power, thickening and directing it.

The hornets came barrelling through the smoke. Angered by whatever the trap had done. One landed on my arm. My Harlequin armour kept their stings from hitting me, but the insects were smart enough to notice and clattered over to the gaps in my armour.

The first sting felt like a hot knife being jabbed into my neck.

“Argh it's in my helmet.” Bors shouted. I could feel our group thrashing around in the dense smoke. We were blind and the hornets seemed little better, but there were far more of them than there were of us.

The smoke was confusing them but not enough.

I heard pained shouts all around me. Sephy was slamming her armour into them. Maeve slashed out with knives, and Bors had dropped to the floor and seemed to be trying to bury himself. I couldn’t spot Tristan.

Another sting, and I instinctively lashed out with a burst of death glamour. The bug dropped dead. The beast's life force was minuscule. Their power was in their numbers, not as individuals.

I had an idea. A terrible idea that Marek would’ve shouted at me for, but it seemed the best solution.

“Yell if this gets too bad. Ack.” Another sting right on the ear. I slapped away the bug and then let my death glamour mingle with the smoke. The amount of glamour was tiny but it spread through the smoke instantly. I could feel it prickle my skin and I fought not to breathe in as another sting almost made me scream.

The level of power wasn’t a threat to my allies, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it safe. Staying in this smoke for too long could have all sorts of dire effects. Thankfully we could tolerate it much better than the hornets.

They began to falter. Those on my friends took off clumsily, while those who were flying about immediately changed course to escape the pressure of death. The lethal glamour immediately triggered some self-preservation instinct that overrode their immense rage.

I swiftly moved the smoke off us, not wanting to expose my friends to it for a second longer than necessary. I gathered it into a wall of deathly smog and pushed it down the corridor, forcing the hornets back.

After a minute or two the swarm sensed it had been thwarted and we heard the buzzing like hundreds of blades on whetstones begin to fade.

We were left panting and cursing.

“I'm killing this Nermil—Merlin wannabe fucker.” Bors said, sitting up and ripping off his helmet to show a face swollen from multiple stings. No one bothered to chide him for swearing, which told me exactly how annoyed everyone was.

“I thought that was a given?” I asked.

“I'm going to get inventive with it.”

“Did you know you can grow crystals in blood?” Sephy said as she pulled a hornet out from where it had crawled under her gauntlets. She was stained red, having used blood to pick off her attackers.

“I did not. But now I'm looking forward to trying.” Bors grinned.

“I’ll help. I can do some interesting things with a scalpel.” Maeve had got the worst of it. Her blade attacks weren't well suited to a swarm. She unsummoned her armour to dig out the corpses of the foul things.

“Are you all alright?” Tristan appeared next to us looking no different. We all turned to look at him. “What? My shadow glamour hid me from them. They’re not that observant a creature. Not all that lethal.”

“Sure Sir ‘Don’t Run that’s what he wants’!” Bors grumbled.

“Are you not glad a couple of us kept a level head? Good work by the way Taliesin. Only Gawain would’ve been able to handle them better with his wind.”

“Death glamour didn’t do anything to anyone right? It seemed like the fastest way to handle it.” I asked nervously. I’d never dosed my smoke with death glamour before.

“I’d take exposure to death glamour over hornets, which says a lot about those fucking hornets. Though please don’t do that again unless necessary. My soul feels cold.” Bors grunted. He got up off the ground. Like Maeve he was doffing his armour to hunt out the few insects that had got beneath it.

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“So if murderous bees attack should I not help?” I asked.

“Please protect us from murderous insects of all types.” Maeve shuddered. “I did not like that one bit.”

“He’s got to be running out of traps by now?” Bors whined.

“I wouldn’t count on it. He’s had years to make this place his own.” Tristan remarked. “Though I’ll admit I’m confused. With this many traps I’d assume he’d be taunting us like he did in the hall.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to tip us off to where he is hiding.” I suggested as I looked around, hoping to spot something other than more endless hallways. I was about to suggest pushing on when I looked over my shoulder.

The rest of the group looked exhausted. We'd been exploring for hours and that was on top of spending the last few days rushing to get here.

“We should make a temporary camp and rest. Maybe backtrack and check in with the others.” I suggested. I knew that without Kay here to act as Marshal none of the Knights would suggest it.

“Let’s make sure we’ve dealt with the hornets first. No way I can rest if I hear that buzzing again.” said Sephy. We all agreed. None of us wanted to deal with that swarm again.

Using the wall of death glamour-infused smoke we boxed them in and then homed in on their nest. Finding it in one of the few rooms that were partially destroyed, we found those rarely. Flooding it with my smoke I found the hornets had made use of one of the many small vents that helped the air flow, ancient runes still helping move the air.

Even at a distance this one didn’t seem to have any airflow. The runes must’ve failed, including whatever anti-vermin aspect must’ve been keeping others from being overrun, allowing the nest to form.

That or Nermil had actively encouraged the vile things to make their home. I wouldn’t put it past him.

I forced them up and out of the vent with the smoke. Only a few were at Bronze. They’d led the attack, but the sheer number of them at Wood rank was enough to be a serious threat to even an Iron rank.

There were several of the vents grouped together. I sent smoke up the others first. I didn’t want to risk being wrong about the protections and find the hornets coming back down on us. Though for those I didn’t use my death glamour. My supply wasn’t unlimited. Just regular glamoured smoke to keep watch.

Once that was done I closed my death smoke around the nest.

As I pushed the smoke up, holding it at the entrance of the vent to ensure they didn’t return, I felt something odd above.

“Wait, I think there’s someone up there?” I paused as I tried to work out what I was sensing. We were deep down. At this distance the detail I could feel with my smoke was limited. I fumbled around for a moment before my smoke was torn apart by a blast of glamour I recognised.

“Oh no.” I groaned.

“What? The fucker’s not up there is he?” Bors asked, getting a light tap from Sephy for swearing.

“No, but I think I might’ve just dropped a load of hornets on Gawain.” I winced, pulling back the death smoke.

A minute later a blast of wind flowed down the vent.

“Can you hear me?” The air began to flow backwards.

“Yes we can.”

“What’s your situation?” In the background a different voice grumbled. “Please no more hornets.”

“We are in a situation badger den. No sign of the badger.” Tristan replied crisply, indulging Gawain’s love of codes. These were a little improvised and as such barely codes at all. “There’s not a code for this but there should be no more hornets.”

“Understood, no sign of the badger out here. Do you need assistance?” Gawain pushed on, clearly not willing to discuss the hornets.

“Not at this time. Any sign of the dogs?” Tristan replied.

“None. We remain watchful of the false moon. Hold for a moment.” Gawain’s voice faltered and the wind glamour faded.

A minute or so later a piece of paper dropped down, carried by the wind. Tristan snatched it up, reading it over.

“He’s saying that using wind to communicate down here is quite tiring. He’ll keep a look out for more smoke.”

“Can you send something back?” Tristan asked me.

“No. Smoke rises. I can make it warm and control it close to me, but I couldn’t push something up there like that.” I could manage a smoke signal of some form, but there was no way he’d understand that.

“We’ll continue on. Keep a look out for other vents.” Tristan nodded.

“But what if…” I was about to say what if the cultists spotted the smoke, but Gawain’s obsession with codes kept us safe.

“We should pause and regroup. At least now we’ve told the others how we’re doing.” Sephy added.

“I don't like it. We've seen neither hide nor hair of this bastard. We found what, like a couple of rooms that showed any sign of being used? One was a trash dump.” Bors grumbled.

“There’s still so much unexplored. The cultists aren’t long behind us.” Maeve muttered, looking around.

“Look this isn’t working. We’re near that central pit room. Let’s go into that auditorium we found and settle in to make a plan.”

There were grumbles of agreement, and we all headed back towards the main hall.

We moved through the old halls. We were growing tired. The constant wariness from the traps, the oppressive feel of the place and that sense that each minute spent the cultists were drawing closer, all of it grated on us. We reached the central hall, standing on the gallery overlooking where we’d entered hours ago and nearly slipped into the pit of death and spikes.

We set up in a room just off the hall. What looked from the design to have once been some kind of auditorium. A semicircle of rising levels around a central podium, all of it now rotted to nothingness. Bits of gold leaf glittered here and there, unchanged by time, and the carvings of noble knights still stood.

I took a seat on one of the raised levels, aimed so I could see the doorway of course. Even here we couldn’t relax. Sephy came and sat next to me, resting her head on my shoulder. Maeve paused looking at us for a second before deciding she was too tired to play pretend and flopped onto her back.

Tristan, the least stung of us, slouched by the door maintaining a watch. His glamour letting him fade into nothing but a shadow. Bors was the only one still standing.

From my seat, with not the warmth of Sephy, the armour rather got in the way, but at least her closeness, I let my mind wander.

My fingers played a tune as I took in the room. I saw Bors walking up to the back wall which was fashioned with clear dedication and precision into a beautiful relief. It showed a picture of an Oak and the Knights standing beneath it. Though I noted a subtle difference in this. Before in the main hall the knights had been kneeling below the Oak. Now the Knights stood, heads only inclined slightly, and next to the Oak stood a knight in ornate armour.

Had something changed or was this just the difference between what those outside saw and what they preached within? Had the ornate knight been their patriarch? Had he sought to stand equal to the Oak?

I mused on this as I continued to play. Our goal of being stealthy was long gone. There was no way that we were surprising Nermil. Now we were just playing cat and mouse. Though this mouse was leading us through a path of bear traps and poison.

“Hmmm.” Bors was the only one of us still standing. He was examining the back wall behind the podium.

“A penny for your thoughts Bors.” I called out, pausing my plucking.

“This room is wrong.” he muttered, fingers drifting over the carvings.

“What do you mean?” Tristan’s head jerked up.

“I’ve been thinking this for a while, but there’s no doors to the servants' quarters.” He spoke quietly. Moving around, he kept rapping his knuckle on the wall.

“The servants' quarters?” Tristan looked around.

“It’s odd, this whole place. It’s all so fine. In Camelot there’s all sorts of hidden passages. Well hidden might be too strong a word, but discreet ways for the help to move around without bothering the powerful. But there’s none of that here. Not a hint of it.” His fingers ran over the surface of the stone.

“I admit I didn’t think to look. Maybe they didn’t use servants like that?” Sephy said, looking at the walls as well.

“I was thinking that too. It’s from so long ago they might’ve done things differently. Still a place this size would’ve needed servants. But weirdly when we found the mess hall the path to the kitchens was one of the few places that collapsed.”

“I’m afraid that makes sense to me. Whatever they did to help make this place stay up might not have expanded to the servants' quarters.”

“Why are you focused on the servants' quarters Bors? You mentioned this when we were on the floor below.” Sephy asked.

“Look I know you're all hoity-toity types.” He waved at us all.

“I take offence. I might be hoity, but I’d not say I’m toity.” I responded, getting a few chuckles.

“Sure, Parfumier. Still you’ve never been a servant in these places. I have. Look, if Camelot fell tomorrow and you had to make a base, would you pick the giant rooms with all the wealth and money in them which are designed to have hundreds of people visit, where everyone is going to come and scrape out every scrap of wealth? Or would you pick the tight corridors and small rooms where all the food, water and general stuff to keep a place going are?”

“That’s fair, but we haven’t seen much of them. And when we did find something that could’ve been them they’d all collapsed.” Tristan observed.

“Again, that made sense. Maybe they had quarters but they didn’t survive whatever happened. Maybe they didn’t have servants like we do. I kind of just ignored it. But now we’re in this room and something is dead wrong here.”

“And that’s?” Tristan asked.

“There’s no entrance for the speaker.” He gestured around.

“Pardon?”

“Think. You’ve been in these kinds of rooms. How rarely have you seen the speaker use the same entrance as all those who’ve come to learn, especially in a place like this? You can feel the separation in the design of the room. There are the juniors and their learned seniors.”

He pointed to the twin sets of narrow stairs to the far sides of the stage. I could imagine such structures used to be hidden by curtains or maybe behind panels, if the piles of faded mulch on the ground were anything to go by.

“The stairs up here aren’t ornate. They’re functional.” Bors smiled, and I paused my fingers on the lute, a grin coming over my face.

“I’m not sure I follow.” Maeve grunted from her place on the floor.

“He’s right.” I saw it. I paid a lot of attention back at the Harkley manor, noting all the ways in and out of a room. There was a pattern to them. “Imagine some uptight cultivator being asked to come lecture here. You have to either wait here in advance or walk down the stairs behind your students and then up some side stairs. There are plenty who’d throw a fit over the indignity. I can imagine approaches to servants changing, but cultivators without an ego? In this place?”

“Exactly. So where’s the door? It’s not just discreet, it’s hidden. And if that’s the case for this door?” Bors grinned.

“Other doors might have disappeared as well.” Tristan cursed.

“You think he might be living behind this door?” Maeve perked up.

“Maybe. Maybe not. But I think this means he’s certainly behind a hidden door.” Bors grinned.

“The traps make so much more sense now. I was wondering what sort of madman would trap his home so ruthlessly, but if he never even stepped foot into the halls.” Tristan growled, his eyes searching the walls.

Bors paused. He’d been tapping on the wall again and again and with his fingers resting on the trunk of the Oak, he tapped again. Silently, he pulled out his blade, and dropped into a ready stance.