Arthurian Cultivation

In our hidden valley, far from where the smells, smoke, and other evidence of my work would be a liability, I indulged in my favourite hobby, alchemy! Specifically the arts of the perfumier. I grinned at the shimmering glass, having got everything set up to my liking.

I stood in the natural cave we’d repurposed, the rough stone walls and altars of stone leaving me looking like some kind of mad hermit. Not helped by the threadbare clothes I wore, spares from our supplies, as I could not risk the scent getting on my usual equipment. My collection of glassware left me looking ready to be cooking up some dark poison or evil brew.

At the centre of it all was the cauldron. The black iron pot was not much bigger than a couple of handspans across, but despite its small size, it formed the centre of this small world. Everything was subtly positioned to enable access to it. I might have some nice boilers, a desiccator, and other glassware, but the core of alchemy was the cauldron.

A ‘true’ witch will rant that it is all you need. They are idiots. I could not imagine a truer witch than Miss Peaches, and she, like any sane alchemist, made judicious use of the advances over the last few thousand years. It is possible to do everything in a single cauldron, but why bother? It's needlessly complicated, and if something goes wrong, some stained skin and warts are the best possible outcome.

I had heard that some witches wore such disfigurements as marks of pride. To me, it seemed more like waving a banner stating that they were bad at alchemy, and given Miss Peaches’ minimalist collection of gear included a portable fume extractor, I suspected she’d agree with me.

Thankfully, I wouldn’t need that today. The only thing at risk today was my sinuses, and possibly a giant monster horde if I got this wrong. Today’s fragrance was, after all, ‘Monster Mist’.

I’d stolen the idea from the Golden Hinde and their plot with Klaus and the Mist Lynx that had savaged Bors. Luring the beasts closer by ourselves would expose us to both beast and Saint, and it also was unlikely to significantly threaten them. We'd be lucky to find even a few worthy foes given the limited time and how thoroughly they'd scoured the surrounding area. Airdropping scent bombs near our foes and flying the scent around the mountains would collect far more attention and expose us to minimal threat.

While collecting the ingredients for such an endeavour would’ve cost us time we didn't have, the Hinde's kind donation of all their belongings included more than enough raw ingredients. While I’d never felt bad about the massacre of the Hinde, I was increasingly realising that wiping them out was a significant service to Euross. Monster Lure was illegal except in very specific circumstances, and it had a tendency to linger and spread itself.

Plenty of careless hunters had returned to civilization with traces of the lure dragging the monsters behind them. In the worst cases, a hunting party would move on before the monsters caught up. Entire villages and even towns had been wiped out by such foolishness.

Why did I know such recipes? Well, when House Harkley hosted a hunt, it needed to be an exceptional one. What better way to guarantee a wealth of beasts than by tipping the scales in their favour? Who cared if a few retainers got savaged by an unexpected surge of beasts? The danger is what made a hunt worthwhile after all!

I shivered, burying that particular pang of guilt back in the vault. Of all the tasks to be given due to my interests, that had stung the most.

I was not a Harkley, nor a foolish hunter. I would not be so careless.

“Sir Taliesin, are you ready?” Gawain asked me. I fought down the urge to correct the use of my non-existent title.

“Yes. Seal me in, keep the air flowing. I’ll let you know when I’m done.” Gawain nodded, and Bors raised a stone wall between us, sealing me in. The air was going to be guided in, bubbling through a trough of water, and would flow out through another pipe that was packed with our entire stock of charcoal to filter the smells.

I started by desiccating a couple of sprigs of Dragon's Breath Creeper, an uncommon plant claimed to root only where dragons have breathed. In truth, the roots just took well to areas with excess fire glamour. The vines, a mix of reds and oranges, would spill out from a single start point, looking like a cone of flame. While most of my ingredients could be distilled directly, the water that was collected in the creeper could burn and sear and would be more likely to repel than attract. If the water was removed, the oils left behind served as a magnet for glamour.

True alchemical perfumes use glamour to aid each scent. Glamour made whatever it suffused more potent, more connected to its true self. I was not one of those cultivators who pondered existence and the 'truths' of glamour deeply, seeking to explore the mysteries of the universe to eke out a fragment of a step in my cultivation. It sounded mind-numbingly boring, yet I felt closest to them when I was amidst my alchemy.

As I started to pull together the core essences that made up the lure, I could not help but ponder the nature of my cultivation. Glamour bled through from the fey realms. Without it, our world would be mundane. We might have some of the tools we have now, but cultivation and all that came with it would be unattainable. Glamour attuned itself to shared features of our worlds, from knowable things like water to the unfathomable experience of Death.

Understanding the fey realm and the art of the perfumier required the same fundamental knowledge. Everything was infinitely complex. A poet might argue we could never understand death, that its infinite shades differ with each passing. They would state the death cry of a king in battle versus the dying breaths of a poisoned rat could be no more considered alike than burning stars and the ocean that reflects them.

The fey realm made a mockery of such beliefs. The water of the fey realm contained everything from the deepest ocean to the tears of a weeping child. The fey could serve you a cup of water, and in a single sip, you might experience being the rain across the fields, the water pumping through the roots, becoming dew drops in the morning waiting for the sun to take you back to the skies.

It was why you never accepted gifts from the fey. You never truly knew what you were getting.

I had found great success in embracing the same principles in my outlook on life and cultivation. I aimed to be a mask of simplicity, hiding chaos. Of always being more than others assumed. In the same way, I was not just a bard, but someone who could call on death itself with my music. My art of weaving together scents went beyond amusing the wealthy and powerful. It enabled my spying and now allowed me to bring monsters down upon my enemies.

With my skills, the right combination of fire and nature glamour, balanced with the right scents, could make a perfume that gave a person an aura of wildfire, packed behind the scent of the flowers it had not yet consumed. It was often considered a frivolous luxury, a waste of an alchemist’s time. It had no ‘practical’ application.

To that, I say, do you have any idea how much it sold for? Even if I learned no other skill, I could probably just make perfumes for the rest of my life and live in luxury.

That thought was filed away. There were people to kill, beautiful knights to be saved, or at the very least waved to as they saved themselves. I struggled to picture Sephy as a damsel in distress. It just didn’t suit her. She had the aura of a villainess in the same way Lance radiated a sense of heroism.

As I’d pondered, I’d distilled the rest of my ingredients. The last component to handle was the Starlight Orchid. Beautiful black petals, dusted with glowing dots, showed the bloom was flush with the dream glamour they collected. Dream glamour was essential to capture the attention of the beasts. It wouldn’t control their minds, but even a whiff of the scent would stand out from the background odours, it would be impossible to ignore.

I had to carefully paint refined monster fat on the delicate petals. Distilling them normally would destroy the minute formations within the plant that held the dream mana in place. Only through a process of enfleurage, where I used fat to draw out the essential oils and glamour within, could it be extracted. As I let that settle in, I used glamour to speed along the desiccation of the creeper vine.

Then it all came down to a question of distillation. Just mixing it with water or alcohol alone would destroy the delicate glamour. Instead, I had to infuse plain alcohol with the corresponding glamour of the ingredients first. A challenge to find infusions that wouldn't add their own odour or affect the interaction of the components. Thankfully, this was a process I knew well, and so the task took a scant couple of hours.

We were lucky that the ‘pungent’ aroma of the lure wasn't a complex one that demanded the distinct essences to mature over time. Much of my standard fare would've required weeks if not months for the smells to find the right balance.

I brought it all together and divided it into a collection of small glass ampoules. Each one I then sealed with a special attachment to the heating runes that sat beneath my cauldron. The glass grew red for a second before I crimped them shut, sealing the vile concoction within.

Taking a look, I could see the liquid was almost totally clear. A yellow tint with little flecks of something floating within, likely trace bits of the Starlight Orchid I'd picked up when I'd extracted the oils. A reflection of the rush job I'd committed to. It hadn't affected the results, though. I could smell the lure in the air. While it would still need infusing with glamour to make it ‘active’, the smell was just right.

The lure was a call. It smelt of fur, blood, and sweat, and the glamour promised prey, lying weak and vulnerable. It also had an edge to it, a challenge, something about it told the nose that this was something worth their attention. The smell was potent, and I regarded the ampoules.

I wouldn't be satisfied with their safety until I'd washed them in alcohol, dipped the whole thing in wax, and then wrapped each in a sturdy case, such as a drinking horn padded with straw that I'd prepared. Accidentally breaking one of these near you would require abandoning whatever mountain you were on, all your clothes, and at least a few layers of skin to be safe.

Speaking of which, I now needed to get clean. No point in doing all of those steps if I was still covered in the scent. I'd just be rubbing it on the very tools I was using to try and obscure the scent.

I threw the clothes I was wearing into my storage ring. It was just a spare tabard and britches. They could be disposed of later. Naked, I summoned smoke around me, igniting some spare paper on the heating element to get the process started. I found myself resistant to high temperatures as a result of my bloodline and cultivation, not totally fireproof in any sense, but enough so that using scaldingly hot ash and smoke to scrub myself was at most an inconvenience.

“How's it going in there? We're running out of time. We need to get in position,” a call came from Lance. She wasn't pleased that we still couldn't find time for her to go contact her family.

“Give me a minute, I'm just cleaning up,” I shouted back.

As I removed any chance of accidental contamination, I did the same for the rest of my equipment. The only exception, the ampoules of lure. The lure I'd created was potent but relatively short-acting. Unlike the Hinde's foul little creation which leaked its glamour over days yet was more of a subtle suggestion, mine would scream its presence. The glamour would only last for a handful of hours.

Pressing glamour to it now would activate the reaction, wasting precious time.

Finally done cleaning, I washed the ampoules and sealed them in wax to lessen the chance of accidental breakages. My full focus was devoted to not dropping them. I placed the first one in a drinking horn packed with straw. I was finishing the second when an impatient voice called out again.

“Taliesin, we need to go.”

“The first two are ready, you can grab them but whatever you do, don't knock me,” I called back as I started on the third. The stone wall came down and Lance made to rush in only to pause at the doorway.

“Is this how everyone does alchemy or is this just a you thing?” Lance said. My brain, so focused on my task, had no idea what the issue was.

“What? Have I spilt something?” I couldn't spare the focus. It was a mistake to let her in. The last ampoule was dribbling wax, so I focused on getting over to the horn. I dropped it within, only to look up and see a red-faced Gawain, a smirking Lance, and a baffled Bors all looking through the doorway.

“Taliesin, why are you naked?” Bors asked. I looked down, finally noticing the cool air moving over my skin.

“Ah, shit.”