Arthurian Cultivation

“And that is how I ended up in your splendid company your ladyship. I thank you for listening to my long tale of woe, challenge and finally triumph.” I finished up. It'd been cathartic to speak at length about my history. Up till that point, I alone knew it, my secrets were only ever doled out in parts between people I'd never see again or by those forever silenced in death.

There came a burst of applause. The Lady had been an attentive audience as one could ask for. She'd oohed and ahhed at moments that almost made her seem human. That was if I ignored her eyes, the glamour that bled out of those orbs held the weight of every drop of the lakes that dotted the mountain. I had no doubt if she used the Evil Eye on me I'd be a dead man.

Completing my bow my whole body sagged. I was not exhausted, I had more energy in me now than compared to when I'd died. It was beyond emotion or the tiredness of the day. My body shook like I'd chiselled the words out into stone. I had been talking for hours, days perhaps but the moon hung still above me.

What strength I had allowed me to fall sideways rather than forwards. I didn't relish ruining my new face but a few hours into it. I blinked. Hours? That felt wrong. I lay back and tiredness slid over me like a tide, I had to be consciously aware of each breath.

The Lady approached me, kneeling beside me, she stroked my long hair out of my face, the silk coming undone somewhere along the telling. It was a refreshing feel, a cool breeze on a summer's day.

“Thank you, you have a true gift with words, with faces, with dance and song. I think you should sleep now, I offer you a place to rest free of obligation, and safe from harm. You shall awake tomorrow with your rewards. I have not enjoyed a story so much as this in a millennia.”

“It's bad luck to sleep without a name,” I mumbled, vaguely aware of old superstitions, babes must be named when their eyes first opened, and before their wailing ceased. That's how you got changelings or so the superstition went.

“Then I shall give you one for a time, there was a bard of old you remind me of. Taliesin, do you mind if I give it to you.” My brain was so much fog, that I became aware I would have to sleep, and it was to sleep without a name or accept one given to me by a fae?

Giving Fae your name was definitely bad, no one had ever written down what to do about taking one. I fumbled for the answer but a wave of calm washed over me as our eyes met.

As if I had a chance of outmanoeuvring this ancient being. She'd trapped me in time, wrung me of my secrets, and I could've very literally been dancing in the palm of her hand around a spoonful of water for all I knew.

She was beyond me. I could only hope her intentions were good. I'd consider it an epic achievement just to wake up tomorrow at this point.

“Taliesin is good.” I managed to mumble.

Waking from a deep restful slumber in a ring of wildflowers would be a wondrous way to start any day. To find the ring of flowers circled with snow added a fresh layer of whimsy to it. I was not dead, nor did it feel like I died again.

I had no doubt the scenes of last night were real, they felt seared into my memory. The Lady's glamour was also nowhere near. Not that I'd notice her if she didn't wish me to. I was already quite adept at controlling my glamour and I likely had fewer years than she had centuries.

The next thing I noticed was my clothes. Someone, I suspected I knew who, had dressed me as a wandering minstrel. It was a mix of practical travel clothes, my jacket layered like a gambeson, but with pleated sleeves and strikingly red trousers. All the rest of my clothes were black or grey. I recognized the look from the tournaments I'd used to attend always coming in a respectable third, only mucking up once and winning. An achievement that sounds better than it was, I was at this point a couple of years older than most competitors due to my Cultivation issues.

The look was completed by a lute which lay on the grass next to me. Another skill I'd built over the last few years as I sought to ever add the exact right kind of value. I could feel the enchantment radiating off it, tentatively I grabbed the instrument.

Glamour flowed through me, the instrument held more potential than any weapon I'd ever been close enough to examine. If it had been a weapon the Knightly Orders would've gone to war over it, as an instrument I had not the foggiest as to how it would be valued. I strummed across its strings, it was of course beautifully in tune.

A fear unwound inside me, the fae generally known as the Lady of the Lake, was one of the Seelie, and the most powerful and grounded of their kin. Their gifts tended to be swords and a destiny. Usually bloody and violent.

Whether that destiny was due to their power or because they'd stuck some poor sod with an incredible artefact, the kind which drew the kind of attention from which Destiny with a capital D was forged, I wasn't sure. Not having it be a blade may at least somewhat temper my destiny. As if sensing this was the perfect time to reveal itself I felt a small whisp of blade glamour.

Blade glamour. From. My. Lute.

A terrible certainty settled upon me. An inevitability. Placing a hand around the neck, I pushed a touch of glamour into it and things started to change. The lute transformed into a blade, a bastard sword, my preferred weapon. The changes didn't stop there, with a billow of smoke my minstrel's attire was swallowed. Only to be revealed as pitch-black armour.

There was an extremely vexing moment when a helmet grew over my head in a burst of smoke. Which is when I realised the transformation was tugging on my glamour to fuel itself. Worse I'd just bound the artefact to myself.

The whole damn thing was a soul enchantment. Bound to my soul till it left this plane. Normally I'd say till death, but I knew that wouldn't be enough to part us.

“Well, I have woken in worse situations,” I said to banish the mood that was settling on me. I mean I'd woken up yesterday knowing I was going to die.

My senses coming back I decided there and then to use the blade as little as possible, pulling on the glamour, I was again washed with smoke. I could now sense the armour and the minstrel's outfit were just empty vessels for my glamour to enforce.

This was apparently a significant difference from the practices of the lost Realm of the Mystic East. The Mystic East was a fraught topic. Depending on your source one of two things happened. Court scholars will tell you that long ago our realms traded pointers about the nature of cultivation where we shared our knowledge of glamour and sought to understand their view of Qi. If you check first-hand sources from the time, a woman named 'Zhang Jinghua' came through a rift, beat up our sorry excuses for cultivators, and was so vexed with our total lack of skill that she imparted much of her knowledge upon us just so we could avoid disappointing whoever found us next.

Apparently, our ability to enforce our armour was a trick she didn't totally hate, so that got to stay.

The court scholars will tell you this is heresy. Though they always struggle to explain the fact the Great Empire of Atlantis, became the lost Empire of Atlantis the very same year she appeared.

Cultivator Armour could be enforced with glamour, in doing so a cultivator sacrificed some of their available glamour, but in return benefitted from more protection than they might otherwise get from regular enforcement. There were numerous other tradeoffs, ranging from mobility to combat styles.

Armour choice was a huge topic of discussion across Euross. Albion was obsessed with plate armour, which ate up lots of glamour, but in turn, made its Knights into tanks capable of dealing with the huge monsters that tended to spawn there.

My new armour was half-plate, far more than I was used to wearing.

I began to cultivate, the bellows breathing sucking up glamour so quickly it made me light-headed. It was a method that assumed you couldn't absorb glamour easily. Now? My Hearth was straining to contain the rushing energy. I began to funnel the excess into the armour.

The glamour around me was dense, not almost liquid as the mirror pool had felt, but soupy and rich.

I'd more than stumbled into the stuff of legends, I'd danced right into its maw. If I was to survive long enough to not become a footnote I had to get my head screwed on right and not find it bitten off. I folded my legs under me and thought out what to do next.

I was not much of a planner, which might make most blink given my meticulous planning of revenge, but that was out of necessity. I needed a plan, so I made one. I'd found focusing on my needs made for the best defence against loss. Wants bred disappointment.

Needs were easier, I could be sure I rarely lost what I needed. And I rarely wanted for much. In fact, I hadn't wanted anything further than ‘escape cause maximum damage’. Did I need to cause damage? Yes, otherwise my mind would've wandered into the madness of the Unseelie long ago.

What did I need right now? Sensing its moment my stomach grumbled.