Arthurian Cultivation

“By all that's Seelie, where's this strength coming from?” Through the red mist of my rage, I struggled against someone—or maybe a pair of people—I didn’t know. It didn’t matter. All that existed was that prick Gawain and his extremely punchable face.

“I'll kill him,” a voice, apparently my own, choked out as I began to slip past the hands holding me.

“Just calm down.” I don’t know who said that, but it only made me angrier.

“Bors, help!” Another shout came, and then the world went dark. I was wrapped in a bear hug, and after a moment or two of struggling, my brain began to settle. Even my rage accepted that I couldn't move Bors. I still flopped about impotently as my blood cooled.

I’d never been so angry that the red mist came down on me before. My pulse pounded in my ears like a marching drum. The red slowly filtered out of my vision, and my rational mind returned from wherever my rage had banished it. My muscles clenched and unclenched erratically, seeking out the fight I’d wanted—no, I’d needed.

I slowly ceased my thrashing.

“Are you touched in the head, Gawain? Why the hell did you say it like that?” I could hear Lance tearing into the bastard.

“I needed to know. Look, it’s been a long day for me as well,” the Knight muttered.

“You good, Taliesin?” Bors asked me quietly.

“Better.” I took in a shaky breath. Since winning my freedom, I'd experienced a lot of new emotions, or rather, I'd let myself feel emotions I'd long suppressed. I'd never once let my anger show like this, and worse, it came with a deep dread of knowing someone who was as close as could be to me was in danger. I had never let my control slip so badly, and I could feel myself already thinking about how I should pick up the pieces and reassemble the mask I’d broken.

That bit was overruled by the part of me that still wanted to punch Gawain in the face. I could apologize and make nice, but I wasn’t going to—not after what he’d accused me of.

“I’m sorry for Gawain. When Arthur is in trouble, he gets intense,” Bors said, placing me back on the forest floor.

“Him? Intense? Who’d have expected it from Sir Sunshine and Rainbows.” I let some of the anger bleed off into a joke. Bors relaxed a touch, or at least stopped looming over me, ready to grab me again. He slowly stepped to one side, allowing me to see Gawain.

“My apologies, Taliesin. I should’ve phrased that better.” Gawain gave me a stilted nod. I could tell his heart wasn’t in it.

“You shouldn’t have waved it at him like a red rag before a bull and demanded he ‘explain,’” Lance was still on the warpath. It was nice to have someone incensed for me. My anger had burned through me, taking my remaining energy with it—a wildfire of blistering emotion, leaving only the ashes of hollow resentment.

From where it had fallen, I snatched up the offending piece of cloth. It was part of the raiment that Paladins wore, soaked in blood. What had got Gawain all worked up was that it bore part of the symbol of House Harkley. Who else had blood being collected in a chalice on their livery?

He'd decided to ask for my assistance in this matter by thrusting it at me while demanding I explain.

His tone of accusation had hurt more than I’d expected. It hadn't just been rude, it carried an implication. That I couldn’t be trusted.

That I was one of them.

“I need to go look to be of any help,” I said, doing my best to keep my breathing under control.

“What if it’s being watched?” Gaz asked. I looked over and found him nursing a scrape on his chin, and his armour was out of place. Was it him I'd wrestled with? I made a note to apologize later. I was all out of diplomacy right now, though, so I forged on.

“Then we’re already in trouble,” I replied bluntly.

Thankfully, the others agreed. The group hashed it out for a minute or two more, but we all settled on the plan.

Bors and Gaz stayed below to keep watch while I got a quick ferry ride up to the tree from Lance, with Gawain also joining us. Both Gawain and I had an esoteric collection of skills that'd be of use in assessing the battle. Lance didn't have any particular tools to help, so she was here to act as a buffer so we didn't end up trying to kill each other.

The entrance to the nest was as wide as a castle gate; the nest was not a broad bed but a hollow ball of twigs the size of regular tree trunks. I shuddered to think what creature made such a thing.

Gawain, Lance, and I stood in the abandoned nest. It was a mess.

A battle had been fought here. The nest’s interior chamber was as wide across as a barracks hall, somewhere where fifty men might sleep. The ground was littered with broken twigs and shredded forest litter.

Near the entrance, the walls were scorched. Through some miracle, the whole place hadn't gone up. Only a total hothead would start a fire in a place like this—likely a desperate Squire. Could it be Arthur? I didn't know his second gift. I could ask, but that would mean talking to Gawain.

Not worth it.

Deeper in the nest, signs of a raging fight were evident. I saw pieces of Divine Cultivator armour mixed in among the debris. Something had blown a hole right through the back, leaving a tunnel of sawdust and broken tree limbs.

The scale of the fighting was most obvious in how it marked the tree. The nest used the tree as one wall, and there, the bark had taken a beating. The ancient, gnarled wood—bark as thick as my chest—was chipped and scarred. Slashes were cut into its bark, marked by trails of dried blood.

“This was an all-out battle,” Lance grimaced as she explored the space.

“They must’ve been tracked back here somehow,” Gawain muttered.

“Such insight! What, did you think they invited them here?” I snapped at Gawain’s idiotic observation.

“Taliesin, focus on the problem. What can we learn?” Lance snapped at me. I grunted in acknowledgement. She was not wrong—how could I help here? I sensed the air for glamour, trying to understand the battle, and flinched back. I could taste death on the air.

Steeling myself, I folded my legs beneath me, getting comfy on a stable bit of the nest floor. There, I began to breathe, seeking to rid myself of earthly distractions.

“What is he doing?” Gawain asked loudly.

“Cultivating from the looks of things,” Lance hissed back.

“Why?”

“To see if I can sense the dead here. Now let me focus,” I snapped. It took a good few minutes to steady myself. Anger would not help me in this task.

This time, it wasn’t the bellows breath or playing my lute. I was going to use the technique that Lance and her mother taught me—the technique with which I'd first cultivated death glamour. I’d got far more of a sense of the dead from that process than when I played music to cultivate.

As I began to cultivate, I could instantly confirm what my senses were screaming at me. There was death here—human death, not some mere beast. That fact alone nearly broke my concentration. The thought of feeling Sephy’s power, of absorbing it, revolted me on a fundamental level. What saved me was my new cloak; it held me tight. As I wavered, my worries assaulting me and the glamour churning around me, it anchored me in place. My wavering will was dragged back to the path before it could become befuddled and lost to the lingering will of the dead.

The cloak kept me upright, a pillar of support to which I was bound. The glamour within gave me something to brace myself against in this ethereal arena of warring wills. I sucked in a breath. The power boiled around inside me; it wanted to go to my hearth, but I refused. I needed to know, needed to sense it.

I breathed out, a low whistle escaping my lips. As I did so, the remaining will in the glamour bled off.

Several people had died here. I didn’t know if it was the time after the death, the mix of people, or what, but I only got the vaguest senses of those who passed. Flashes of personality, I felt—I could taste a common zealotry in most of them. If that had been it alone, I might’ve torn my hair out in frustration, not knowing for certain what had happened here. But my mind went back to when I’d accidentally tried to consume the Cardinal and the pressure that the Inquisitors had placed on my cultivation when I’d handled their deaths.

My immediate concerns lightened, and I funneled the death glamour right into my cloak. As I did, I felt its presence behind me increase, which would make it even easier to cultivate in the future. I marveled at the gift. Did Ursul even know it could do this?

“No one at Iron died here. Four, maybe five Squires died, but Sephy and Arthur didn’t,” I said as my eyes snapped open, startling Lance, who looked to have found a corpse. Gawain turned from where he was examining the cuts in the tree bark, his shoulders slumping.

“You’re sure?” Gawain asked, his voice more fragile than I was used to.

“I can’t tell much from death glamour alone, but I can sense the strength of their cultivation,” I replied. I was already calmer, knowing that I wasn’t standing in the grave of my friends. That had settled the storm of emotion somewhat. I got up to help Lance, while Gawain leaned back against the tree and took deep breaths.

“What can you tell us about this bugger?” Lance asked as we maneuvered the corpse out of where it’d been slammed into the nest wall by some kind of technique. It was one of the dead Squires I’d sensed. What was odd was his withered appearance; he seemed almost mummified.

“Did Sephy drain him?”

“This doesn’t look like her work.”

“How can you tell?” I replied, and both Lance and Gawain raised an eyebrow at me. “Don’t be so surprised. We met almost exclusively at balls—there weren’t a lot of opportunities to exsanguinate people there.”

“If she’s draining a body, she tends to just cut off a limb to speed the process up. This Squire had his arteries cut open at the neck and wrists. It’s less efficient.”

“But wouldn’t sully the corpse. The doctrine of the church is that the body should be as whole as possible in death. A blood cultivator would get in a lot of trouble for cutting limbs off his fallen allies.”

“That also tracks with the attacks over there. While the attacks are all marked with blood, some have a lot of splatter while others don’t.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck. I know who the Harkley is.”

“You do?”

“Look, the family wants lots of fire cultivators; they also get blood cultivators occasionally, but that’s a problem.”

“I thought they were all about the Blood Curse?”

“No, the Patriarch is all about the Blood Curse, which makes the entire family loyal to him. You know what would make you immune to the Blood Curse, or able to set up your own?”

“The Blood gift!” Lance said as I nodded.

“So the Patriarch doesn’t really want a lot of blood cultivators upsetting his monopoly. He keeps a few about, under heavy scrutiny, until they prove themselves. The only one I’m aware of at Iron is Atstor, and he is a right fucker, even compared to the rest of them. He’s a rising star in the family. Fire is his other gift, so he’s got both of the signature powers. He's exactly the kind of person the family would send here to try and increase his strength.”

“I’ve heard of him in competitions. They call him Blood Boiler.” Lance winced, and I didn’t blame her. His reputation was one of brutal power. It also explained the splashes of blood. The Harkley Patriarch was most threatened by those who demonstrated fine control over their Blood gift, likely because that’s what was needed for the curse. He wasn’t overly worried about some meathead who flung blood around.

“It would also explain how he tracked them here. All he’d need was a little of Arthur’s blood, and he could use it to locate them.”

“Could he still be tracking them?” Gawain asked, that tension he’d released was already building back up.

“I’m not sure. As you can imagine, knowledge about blood cultivation wasn’t freely available to me. I know fresh blood works, but I have no idea how long that lasts,” I replied. I’d seen Atstor show off his powers on a hunt before.

“Can you not guess?” His voice came out hard and sharp. I didn’t have the energy to waste being annoyed at him anymore. I just shrugged and began to scour the corpse of the Squire for clues.

“We should collect what we can and—” Gawain began.

“Camp. Neither of you two are going to say it, but we’re all run ragged. We’re in some fae twilight forest, and we have no idea where to go next. You’re both worried, I get it, but if we head out now, we’re liable to get into more trouble." We both tried to argue, but Lance cut us off.

"If these two are half as capable as you make out, they'll have hidden their trail well. If the Seelie smiles on us, we might even get lucky, and the pair of them will loop back here having killed this fucker, and we can all go home.” She stood with hands on her hips, daring us to argue.

“You're right. Assuming it's Atstor, well, he doesn’t play nice with others that aren’t totally subservient to him. If he has other Iron’s with him, they’d have to be weak ones he could bully. It’s possible they’ve already killed all his minions, and assuming Arthur is at your level, he and Sephy would be more than enough to handle Atstor if he doesn't have any minions to distract them with.”

“Great. Let’s get back to the others then.” Lance clapped her hands together.

“But—” Gawain began before I cut him off.

“Have a little faith. I thought you believed that the Lady was guiding us?”

“The Lady isn’t one to reward slacking,” he shot back, though of all things, my snark did seem to settle him. I was not so lucky. My own barb tore open the still-healing wound that was my worries and frustrations about the Lady. How much did she predict? How much was decided?

"That's how we fucking find them,” Lance crowed, smacking her fist into her palm.

“You don't expect the Lady to turn up and just help?” I asked, genuinely confused.

“No, I was just remembering when I met her. Or rather where!” Gawain twitched at that, but I caught her point of view.

“Dreamweaving! You're a genius.” I must be tired because I actually hugged her.

“See, I knew having a lie down would be a good idea!” She said, patting me on the back.