Arthurian Cultivation

Book 2 Chapter 74 - Clash of Steel

I hid behind my cloak, retreating backwards towards the rooms at the far end of the gallery. The wave of death glamour washed over me. The Paladin of Mercy was no joke. The raw power of death that rolled off him left me shivering.Even with my cloak helping absorb the wild emanation I had unleashed by destabilising his attack with a curse, I could still feel the flavour of his power. It was the sound of the executioner’s axe hitting the block, of hemp ropes snapping taut and bodies swinging below.

It held judgement within it. Authority wanting you dead and seeing it through.

I felt my own power writhe in response. From the ashes will rise beautiful chaos. I was the opposite. Some part of me spoke to death in the face of overwhelming force, of going down swinging, of burning those last moments all the brighter.

Then shouts, an argument. The Paladin of Mercy yelling at his fellows and then a release of the most complex glamour I had ever felt in a wave that could only be Steel or higher. I could not even guess at the spell, but I could tell it was not good news.

I disappeared into my smoke, hobbling a little. The bastard’s knife had hit me in the thigh. The blade glamour had allowed it to punch partially through my armour. My cloak had thankfully drained the death glamour so it was just a flesh wound, but it was still an irritation.

I retreated into the doors off to the side of the gallery. I was not about to run, but being able to pull back seemed like a wise decision.

We all held our breath. The cultists, who I could not see but could sense through my smoke, were also holding still. All of us looking around. The only movement was Tristan, retreating in shadow towards the others after his strike at the Inquisitor.

“What did you do? Explain or we kill him, and you do not get your artefact!” Sephy shouted, holding a blade to Nermil’s throat.

The Paladins shifted. I assumed the priests did as well, but whatever magic they had deployed to banish my smoke still held, so I could not check them. Everyone was silent for a moment, and then the power swept over us.

The power of the scroll revealed itself. An oppressive and powerful aura slammed into us. A Steel level of power, but unrestrained.

Thunder filled the room a moment later. Wind smashed into us, the violence so great that my ears popped from the pressure and my smoke was clawed away.

Desperately I tried to clear my eyes while my senses reeled. The only thing this power could compare to was watching Ursul when he had been tearing apart the small army of cultists who had trapped him. Even then I had experienced it at a distance.

This was too close, like a blade pressed to my throat.

“I see why you called my hounds, though I am disappointed.” A figure appeared, a woman whose form I recognised from camp in the mountains months ago.

The Spear Saint Ginevra.

She stood regal in armour edged with shining gold, clutching a spear of flowing silver in one hand. At her hip was a reliquary of some sort, a box with a pulsing beacon of energy that fouled my senses. Strangely, it did not reek of divine corruption, instead tasting like the pure energy of fae glamour, an odd thing for a saint to carry. It was such an overwhelming force that it took me a moment to realise that another figure had been dragged with her.

Her left arm was clamped around the neck of Arthur’s limp form. I felt my breath catch. All of us paused.

“Look at what I found on the way down!” She grinned, enjoying the looks on our faces as she casually threw Arthur at the feet of the priests. “Keep him alive.”

“Now explain what is going on. Tobias, report. I do not see the Grail. If you have wasted artefacts just to save yourselves, you will wish you had just died.” The priest at the back bowed. Just as he tried to speak, the spear jumped out of the Saint’s hand and landed at Bors’ neck. The knight paused as he tried to lift his blade.

I watched as Bors took a nervous gulp and then relaxed his body, no longer preparing to strike.

“My hounds have caught some little weasels. You are at my mercy. Act and I kill you.” She turned on Bors, snapping at him. “Right now you could be valuable as ransom. Become more trouble than you are worth and I will eliminate you. I have some time here before I am noticed. If I think any of you are aiming to make me waste it, I will end you.”

A wave of evil eye washed over all of us. I felt my knees buckle and fell to the ground.

“Tobias, make it quick. The less time I am here, the better.”

“Saint Ginevra, the artefact is close. The man they have trapped claims to know its location, and to have measures in place to destroy it.”

“This is what I get for not briefing you properly. An artefact of the Guiding Star is not so fragile as to let this scum destroy it.” She snarled and turned on the bleeding conman, whose eyes went wide with panic. She took a breath. “At least you are doing better than the idiots I spotted out by the forest. They were killing each other. Now, little wizard, tell me—”

“Where is it?” She smiled as she spoke.

I looked up as she let out a sharp laugh to see Nermil’s eyes rolled back in his head. She tutted, as one might at a misbehaving child. First, with a wave of her staff, the stone pinning him to the ground was blasted away into gravel. She then lashed out with her staff, striking him in the gut.

He awoke in a spluttering cough, body spasming.

“Neat trick. Thought you could hide from me in your own dream, did you? Do not defy me again. Just tell me where it is before I start torturing you.” The spear floated above him, spinning slowly as it descended to hover just over his eye.

He wheezed. None of us could do anything. We were bound in place by the weight of her power. From the grunts and frozen poses of the cultists, it seemed she was not being delicate in her use of power.

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“It is safe. I can give it to you. But—”

“You pathetic rat. Understand I do not need you to find it. I do not want to be here, in this vile place. The sooner I leave, the better. The only reason you are still alive is that right now I am willing to believe you are the fastest way to find it. Give it to me, and I promise I will let you live long enough to beg for why I should permit you to live. Waste my time? Make me believe it will be faster to search myself? I will drag you with me as I look, torturing you the entire—” She moved.

The spear flashed out, and I could move. A fresh aura, a familiar soothing power rolled over us all.

Rensleigh rose out of the shadows, blades coated in darkness, and slammed into the glowing spear.

The Rensleigh I knew was a phantom who seemed to hover around Maeve, a hawk permanently waiting for a chance to strike. Her armour was blackened steel, her weapons a pair of sturdy blades that rode the line between short sword and knife.

Her face held its usual sharp focus, her eyes thin, and her hair pulled back into a sensible bun. She looked the part of a governess who had stepped into a war.

“The lot of you should run.” She spoke coolly, a manipulation of glamour carrying the words to our ears, even as the sound of a storm of knives filled the room. The wind whipped in all directions.

It was at that moment I was reminded of the power of those at Steel.

There are moments in my life where I have felt small. One of those was when I had been shipped out to watch a mountain split itself open with burning hot lava. The lifeblood of the earth pouring out as the world rocked beneath my feet and the land was consumed in ash and fire.

I had stood there, feeling nothing but a speck of dust before the power on display. Even at a distance I had felt the heat change, the ground shift, and the very landscape remake itself.

This was a personal, localised version of that extreme.

Ginevra did not step back from Rensleigh’s storm of blades. She dived into it.

The spear and the shadow blades met with a detonation that rang round the gallery like a bell. My teeth rattled. The stone beneath my boots cracked like ice. Light and darkness tore at each other before me.

The shockwave flattened the nearest cultists. Our knights were already on their knees, clustered together desperately on the landing. Part of the ceiling on the left side of the hall collapsed, sealing off the easiest path to them.

I began to hobble, my leg still wounded from Mordred’s attack, struggling to stand as waves of aura and power washed over me.

I could not track the exchange. The spear was a comet, a line of molten silver carving arcs through the air. Rensleigh’s blades were voids in motion, swallowing light, each strike opening pockets of screaming pressure. Every clash sounded like a cathedral roof collapsing.

We were insects on the edge of a volcanic vent.

You do not fight a volcano. You survive it.

Ginevra appeared to give ground. I caught a flash of the battle as one of the shadow blades lashed out at the strange reliquary at her side, and the Saint was forced to swing her spear to intercept.

“You fool, if you destroy it the demon will come down on both of us!” the Saint complained, but Rensleigh did not waver.

The governess drove her back, each step gouging trenches in the stone. Shadows spread like oil across the floor, climbing the Saint’s greaves, trying to devour the gold-edged brilliance. For a flicker of a second, hope flared in my chest.

Then the damned cultists had to ruin everything.

“For the Saint!”

Shouts rang out as Paladins and Squires launched long-range attacks. Not at Rensleigh. Not foolishly.

At us.

Their presence was only the merest tip of the scales. It was a cover. I felt power begin to gather around the priests below. Glamour forming into a dense shape, held by some rune array or cultivation technique. A shining blade pointed at my allies. They drew out jewelled objects full of the cultists’ tainted power, which began to burn, consumed by the technique they prepared.

I tried to throw another scent bomb at them. The halo of protection they had created at the beginning was gone. As I did, I had to dodge a glamour knife thrown by Mordred, who was still up on the gallery with me, though he was heading towards my allies on the landing. Their backs pressed to the art of the tree as they sought to defend themselves from the chaos.

It made them a target.

The priests’ voices rose in chant, feeding it. The air thickened with conviction, a choir reinforcing their technique. Bors threw a javelin at them, but the Paladin Fallowmere appeared out of nowhere and cut it from the air.

Rensleigh’s next strike shifted, her attention consumed by protecting her charge. She sent a blade at the priests. The last remaining Squire who had survived up until that point dived in front of it, his body literally torn apart by the power. His remains splashed over the priests with such force that their technique lost its focus. The power spilled out into rays that blasted chunks from the ceiling.

That distraction was enough.

The spear punched through the shadow and detonated. The backlash blasted half the gallery railing away. The fight drifted, inexorable, towards us as though we were pebbles in the path of a landslide.

For the first time, Rensleigh had to step back. And worse yet, the priests had not stopped.

Our saviour had revealed a weakness that the Saint did not hesitate to push.

A lance of silver light screamed past Rensleigh and towards my friends. Rensleigh interposed herself without hesitation. The impact lifted her clean off her feet. Armour shattered. Blood painted the air in a fine red mist before she hit the ground and slid.

Ginevra closed the distance, but a burst of power lashed out and she pulled back, a bloody cut carved just above her brow. She was knocked back behind her own priests.

Rensleigh was not out of the fight yet.

She threw an attack straight at the priests and their gathering power. Ginevra did not even react, casually dodging it, allowing it to plough through the very priest who had summoned her, just so she could close that much faster on her opponent.

I began to run towards my friends, even if it took me closer to Mordred. I hoped I could dodge the bigger man, get around him and join the others. I could not add to the possible hostages and distractions for Rensleigh.

I stumbled across the debris-covered floor. I used smoke to try and block any sight of me, even as the air trembled and warped around me. I hoped I could slip past. I could feel Mordred already heading down the curving stairs towards my allies.

They clashed again and we were all knocked back by the force, my smoke ripped from me. I fell down the steps I had been aiming for.

And there on the floor right beside me was the Paladin of Mercy. The man who had introduced himself as Mordred.

His armour was scuffed and scraped. Small traces of blood splattered over him from his battle with Maeve and Sephy. He looked over as I landed beside him. The eyes were wrong, pinpricks of utter madness.

Why did I have to get the true zealot!

I rolled sideways, falling a couple of steps, just avoiding his frantic swing. The blade, humming with death and blade glamour, carved into the marble stairs.

Smoke thickened around me as I desperately tried to hide myself. I rose to my feet, hearing Mordred do the same, only for both of us to stagger as the next clash in the Steel exchange made the hall shudder.

“You will suffer, heathen.” Death glamour flooded his blade, the flavour of judgement, the sword reminding me of an executioner’s axe.

I twisted, smoke snapping around me as his blade carved through where my spine had been. The edge caught my cloak and I felt the burst of death glamour feed it to capacity. The rest burned around it like a furious halo. My body felt cold, sensations disappearing, my lungs tightening as the very life was drawn from them.

My own defences managed to capture and contain it, stopping its march. This was the path I could have taken, becoming a death knight. A man whose power was fit for one purpose. I did not envy him. It felt wrong to me.

I staggered back, swinging desperately at him with my blade. He sidestepped it and took a step forward. I made a mistake then. I was too consumed in our battle, not listening to the smoke. If I had, I would have felt the missing ground, the shattered marble where the bannisters had once stood before the battle had destroyed them.

I stepped on nothing and dropped.

I was falling. I bounced once, painfully, off something. I heard a shout from Sephy. And then I was falling faster, the pit opening beneath me. The spikes and death waiting below.

The zealot did not even watch me fall. He just turned on my friends.