Arthurian Cultivation

As one we moved up, readying ourselves. My lute shifted into a blade. I placed a pipe in my lips and let smoke begin to form. Maeve flipped onto her heels, sword in one hand, knife in the other. Sephy’s shield floated before us, ready to absorb an attack. Tristan kept an eye on the door, but moved to the base of the stage.

Bors ran a thumb against the stone. The sound of grinding stone was the only noise in the room as he sketched out the frame of the door. He stepped back, held up his fingers, counted down, three, two, one, and then launched a kick at the dead centre of the door.

The stone shattered like glass, tumbling away to reveal a corridor of shadow.

“I sense some—” Sephy managed to cry out before… before.

I was in a bed. It was warm. Sephy was pressed up beside me, warm and comfortable. I was groggy from sleep. We were in Alka, enjoying a moment together. I lingered, ignoring the swirling thoughts in my mind. I reached up to touch her face. …Why did my mouth taste of smoke?

I snapped out of the dream with a snarl. A pleasant dream to trap me. I shuddered. I truly loathed dream glamour.

Around me my fellows stood swaying, eyes unfocused. It seemed I was first to break out. I lashed out, smacking each with my ash-filled knife, hilt first, rousing us from the attack.

I could feel it. This wasn’t a trap. There was direct will behind it, an intent that had brushed up against my own.

The doorway was empty. The embers in my pipe were lower than when they started, but not by much. We were at most a minute behind him. Still, pushing on alone would be suicide.

So as the others stumbled to wakefulness, I broke vials of alchemical smoke and drew on my power to multiply and expand its reach, flowing down the path ahead.

My smoke flooded through the hidden halls. This corridor was long, the ceiling arched and detailed. It was no servants’ access, but a private hall for the powerful. I found several paths breaking off from it. Sadly, the doors were closed.

“That fucker.” Bors charged forward, the rest of us following close behind.

“Let’s get these doors open.” Maeve drew her blade, preparing to slice into the stone.

“Be wary of…” Tristan, who had shifted back to the shadows, called out a warning, but Bors just charged, switching out his blade for a war hammer. He slammed it into the first door, smashing it open.

“You spread your smoke, we’ll get the doors,” Bors shouted. I nodded, and then felt Sephy’s hand on my shoulder.

“Stop.” She hissed. Then she used her glamour to pull up a drop of blood from the floor and pointed to one of the distant doors.

“Don’t let him know we’re tracking him.”

“I’m thinking that door next, Bors.” I pointed at the one Sephy had picked. I then pointed out another to Maeve to help sell our confusion.

“Knock, knock.” Bors shouted, raising his hammer.

The door shattered. My smoke flooded through.

This was servants’ quarters. The corridor was narrow and tight, the walls plain, and the ceiling was studded with chunks of crystal that kept up a level of functional gloom.

Flowing down the hall, I felt the air move. Perhaps another vent caused it, but it gave me enough leeway for some creative truth telling. “I can feel the air shifting. He might be down this way.”

Sephy nodded beside me, her eyes on the drop of blood she had collected. We moved down the corridor single file.

“What do you think the chances are he trapped these?” Sephy asked the air.

“Possible. Bors, keep your defences up.” Tristan’s voice felt like it was right over my shoulder. I relayed that to Bors.

The big man nodded and pulled out a shield from his ring. Sephy moved her shield above us, and Maeve took up the rear. Her blade was not that good against most traps, but she did have some of the fastest reactions out of any of us.

Tristan and I were in the middle. I focused on spreading my smoke, pushing it ahead in a billowing wall.

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After a couple of twists and turns, past sealed doors covered in runes that Tristan muttered about being ‘dream illusions’, we found ourselves in what may have once been a servants’ mess.

Here were the signs of life we had been missing. There was a simple alchemy set against one wall, a desk with some pieces of metal being engraved with runes, a table with one seat, and stacks of books on beautiful shelves.

Every single thing in the room was unbearably gaudy. It was like some deranged magpie was nesting here.

“This is where his money was going.”

“I lost him. He must have healed. I don’t know where he is now, but he’s close,” Sephy whispered, looking around.

“We’re not far from the main hall. It all loops back,” Bors added. I was glad one of us was keeping track of our progress.

“Investigate. See if you can find any sign of him,” Sephy called out.

We spread out in the room. I was looking over everything, trying to find more evidence, disturbed dust or other indications of his passing. However, it seemed he had made a very comfortable nest. The walls were covered in runes, and I had to assume they were doing something to tidy the place up. I could feel some kind of pressure around my smoke, as if some glamour was trying to force it away.

“Should we try and warn the others? He might be fleeing. They might need to know,” Maeve growled, as she pulled back a bookcase, checking it was not concealing anything.

“The alchemy station has a vent outside.” I moved over. I did not like pulling back the smoke, but Maeve was right. Warning the others to be on the lookout was the right call. I started to push the smoke up the vent while I looked over the alchemy desk.

It was a hodgepodge of tools. There was a distinct lack of safety tools for poisons, though plenty of options for refining acids. That tracked with the traps we had found, which eased me a little. I did not want more poisons. I threw everything of quality into my ring as I waited for my smoke to reach the top of the vent and spread, hoping that the others would spot us soon.

“There’s so much tat here. Do we really think he is going to leave this all behind?” Bors was looking through other rooms, each doorway opened to reveal another temple of excess.

“He hasn’t survived this long by being an idiot,” Sephy growled. She stood still, no doubt trying to pick up any blood or moving metal that might help us locate him.

I felt a disturbance in the smoke.

“Can you hear me?” Gawain’s voice came a moment later. I had to pause to try and remember the man’s odd codes.

“We hear you. We’ve found the badger, but it gave us the slip.” I tried to explain, not remembering the exact words.

“That’s not the right code.”

“By all the courts. It’s a Warm Hearth scenario.” Tristan appeared beside me, stepping out of the shadows he had been hiding in. Given that Nermil had to know about his shadow glamour, there was no point not leveraging it for every advantage.

“Good. I warn you that the dogs are in the den.” The voice called back. All of us froze. We all knew that code. Somehow the cultists had caught up with us.

“Since when?”

“An hour to two ago. Three dogs, two hawks. Lightly wounded. More waiting at the den mouth. We’ll handle them. I’ll send hooves to warn the others.”

“They’ll be close to the main hall at this rate. Fuck!” Bors muttered.

“Assistance required?” the voice asked.

“Don’t abandon the watch. We don’t know where he is. If you can clear out the dogs, do it,” Tristan replied sharply.

Bors stiffened. He was in a room over, and pointed at a door.

“I just felt some stone shift,” he shouted, and began to push forward.

“We have to go,” Tristan called up.

“May your blades be sharp and your armour sturdy!” The wind carried the voice after us as we swept out of the room, following Bors.

We moved in deadly silence, the only sound our armour. Our faces set in stony countenance. We had already been hurried, but now there was a fresh focus. Nermil was a threat, but he was more like a natural hazard, a swamp or bog that threatened to suck you down. The cultists were far worse.

My determination redoubled. All this work to get here, to find this conniving bastard, and now the Divine Cultivators were going to beat us to the finish? Unacceptable.

We passed more opulent rooms, decked out in all manner of finery. One was even dedicated entirely to costumes. Wigs and mannequins lined the walls. I wanted to take it all, but Bors did not pause, and I refused to be left behind.

“It might be a trap. Lure us in,” Sephy called, as we ploughed through a corridor lined with paintings.

“Seems likely,” Bors grunted from the front. He came to a door and brought the hammer down. The stone shook and cracked.

“But what choice have we got? Let’s get this bastard.” He struck again, and the door fell apart, whatever power stopped him from moving it with his gift dissolving, allowing him to swipe it out of his path.

I might not be a Knight, but I wanted my part in this story. Nermil bothered me on a deep level. We were both showmen in our own way, but I loathed what he had done with that skill.

The brutal destruction had revealed a doorway we must have walked past half a dozen times as we had traipsed around the main hall over the last few hours. We spilled out onto the gallery overlooking where we had first entered, above the flowing staircase with its hidden pit trap, and the landing before the stairs split, over which the vast carving of the oak loomed.

The light of our lamps filled the room with long shadows. The ancient carvings of trees and knights danced as the lights flickered and spluttered, struggling with the speed of our movements.

I was second to last out. Only the faint sense in my smoke told me that Tristan was right behind me, hidden in shadow, looking for his own opportunity to strike down our opponent. The others were hunting about, looking for any sign of him.

For a moment I thought it a cruel joke. He had led us on a merry chase in circles, taunting us by bringing us back to this one place. Beside me, Sephy froze, her gaze locking onto something. We all followed her eyes and found our quarry.

There, across the vast hall, calmly standing and looking at us like we were naughty children, was Nermil.

The conman, who named himself for the legendary wizard, took the form of an older man. It was a stately scholar’s look, refined grey hair flowing behind him to match a carefully shaped beard. He wore humble robes that were in such total contrast to the wasteful wealth we had just pushed through that I did not even entertain the idea this was the real version of him.

He smiled at us.