Woad Children (Challenger's Call Book 3)

by Nathan Thompson

  “No, the Chaos Wound spreads across a wide distance when it arrives on a planet. The center mass lands at one location while all of the other tiny globs—” she looked down in disgust—“serve as scouts, or a vanguard. They help the Chaos Wound determine where the best nutrients are to grow. There shouldn’t be another one within dozens of miles. The fact that you found one of these means we caught this Trial in its early stages. Which is good, because the Woadlands are probably the worst place for this kind of Trial to form.”

  “Noted,” I replied. “This threat will probably go near the top of our to-do list. Do we need to burn the tree I found this thing on?” I looked back at the twisted plant, and realized it was still bleeding.

  “No no,” Breena said quickly. “It’s not that powerful. The giant clumps are resilient, but once they’re removed from the host the danger has passed. The infection needs the main body of the parasite to continue reproducing itself. At the very worst case, the remains of it will kill the tree after the plant expends itself by driving out the contaminants. But usually the host can throw off the lingering effects on its own, though any immune system it has will be taxed for a while. Sorry,” Breena suddenly said. “Forgot you were from Earth. Infections there are super scary.”

  “Not really,” I began defensively. “As long as you wash your hands frequently, and go to the doctor regularly, and eat the proper foods, that are cooked the proper way, and vaccinate yourself and your children with appropriately tiny portions of the most dangerous diseases so that their bodies know how to fight them at the earliest age possible, and pay attention whenever a new strain of disease suddenly springs out of nowhere, and don’t have too much unprotected sex or get bitten or cut, you’re probably not going to die. Well, usually,” I clarified. “Sometimes you just have bad luck and get struck with a terminal disease no one’s ever heard of. And cancer strikes all kinds of good and decent people. Are you saying this doesn’t happen on other planets, though?”

  “No, Wes,” Breena said sadly. “None of the other planets have to really deal with any of that. Nonmagical diseases just aren’t anywhere near that aggressive, and even then, magic and vital guards take care of all but the worst ones pretty thoroughly. And those always qualify as Trials or Tumults. Like the Chaos Wound.” She pointed to the dead flesh-blob. “Which still can’t infect people or animals. Sorry, Wes,” she added sympathetically, seeing my incredulous, angry expression. “If it makes you feel better, all of the doctor-type Challengers Stell summoned in the past were just as frustrated with how easy we apparently had it. They were also really quick about thwarting our plague-based Challenges.”

  “Good for you guys,” I said dryly, trying not be annoyed about just how unfair my world had it compared to everyone else. “I’m going to check on the tree anyway.

  “Free magic,” I muttered under my breath as I walked. “Free power, cookies, and punch for everyone when they beat one of life’s challenges. Bodies that can heal or grow stronger on their own, without going to the doctor or the gym. Even their cancer’s on easy mode.”

  I told myself to snap out of it and began checking the tree, still refusing to believe that my job was as easy as lopping off the messy part and throwing a bit of magic around. The tree had stopped moving as soon as I ripped the Chaos Wound off of it, probably because it was no longer receiving commands to protect the monster fragment and had gone back to just being a tree. But it was still bleeding from the patches I had noticed earlier. I cast Know thy Scent again, examining the dwindling red streams with my new magical sense.

  I found the stream to be full of mostly dead cells. Breena was right. The blood itself could probably attract other germs but the infection from the Chaos Wound itself was inert, like Breena said. If I was on Earth I’d probably still insist on sterilizing the entire tree or get slapped by a health expert for not having done so yet, but right now something else was catching my attention.

  The magic in the blood had not faded yet. In fact, it was even stronger than the magic I felt from the Chaos Wound itself.

  That reminded me about what I noticed earlier. The damage caused to the tree wasn’t so much by the change the Chaos Wound had brought, it was that the change was incomplete. I had seen mobile trees back in the Woadfather grove on Avalon. Those giant plants did all kinds of things that trees weren’t supposed to be able to do, and it didn’t seem to harm them one bit. In fact, people accepted them as normal. The powers somehow fit the tree. It gave me an idea.

  I looked for a barkless, bloody patch on a limb of the tree instead of the actual trunk. I managed to find one on a thin branch, where the blood actually trailed sideways along the limb like veins in an animal. Instead of dripping off, the blood seemed to be staining the limb.

  Hey Karim, Weylin, Eadric, I sent. Can you guys keep a secret?

  You mean like we do about your feelings for farm animals? Eadric drawled. Sure. Why?

  Har-har, I thought. I’ve got an idea, but I need to send you an update on what Breena and I discovered.

  Our mindlink had strengthened to the point where a basic info dump was easy.

  Holy shit, Eadric said next. Tree cancer?

  Chaos Wounds, Karim corrected. They are rare even for Trials and Tumults, but there are records for them.

  Yeah, Alum was the first to notice it, I replied. I’m not sure he recognized what it was, though. I’ll have to sit down and talk with everyone tonight.

  I still hadn’t been able to add any of the Gaelguard to the mindlink, and it was frustrating. But there were probably still advantages to vocal conversation. But I had an idea for the remains of the tree that involved the magic you guys taught me, and I was hoping I could run it by you three.

  Why not involve Breena? Weylin asked.

  I’m worried she’ll think I’m playing with powers beyond my mortal ken, and that she’ll nip my idea in the bud.

  Isn’t that a little hypocritical? Weylin asked. You were just suggesting that Earth is the only planet that takes disease seriously enough.

  I’m not messing with the disease itself, I replied stubbornly. I’m messing with the magic left over. And it’s for a good cause. Look, here’s what I want to do. I sent the schematics of my plan over the mindlink. Do you think that’s something that could work?

  That’s actually pretty safe, Eadric acknowledged. Safer than one of your usual ideas, anyway.

  This was coming from one of the assholes that talked me into sticking my hand into a lightning trap.

  Eadric’s right, Karim commented. You won’t know enough to be perfect on your first try, but your idea is solid.

  That would have to be good enough, I decided. I dismissed Toirneach and drew Carnwennan, then began carefully cutting away the branch, projecting my actions to Eadric so that he could critique what I was doing. I breathed a sigh of relief when all he made was a noncommittal grunt, and then I put the branch into my storage space. I’d finish the rest of it tonight, maybe after Breena had passed out in a sugar coma or something (Guineve said I should begin packing at least one cookie per Challenge for emergency measures).

  “Wes, everything okay?” Breena flew over. “I got a sneaky feeling from you through the mindlink and our personal bond.” She raised an eyebrow. “Everything okay?”

  Crap. I still hadn’t gotten used to having that. Rookie mistake.

  “Um, yeah,” I answered lamely. “I was getting hungry, and I remembered that Guineve had packed me some extra food for the trip…”

  “Ooh,” she crooned, wincing. “Darn it. No fair, Wes. Now I’m stuck thinking about her pastries. Don’t tell me what she actually packed, though, or I’ll have a much harder time being an adult.”

  “Right,” I said, happy this turned out so well, and that technically, I was thinking about cookies just then. “I’m thinking, after we reconnect with some of the local population, taking care of the Chaos Wound should be our most important task.”

  “Um...” She hesitated. “Actually, I sort of forgo
t what I was coming over here to tell you about when I saw you wave that thing around.” She flew a little higher and pointed out to the distant sky. “You noticed that giant white wall in the skyline too, right?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Alum said that thing was a serious problem. It looks like it’s at least a Trial-level winter storm, from what you guys taught me earlier.”

  “It’s actually much worse,” Breena confirmed. “The stormwall isn’t just a freak weather pattern. It’s the herald of an invasion. The Hoarfolk are coming to the Woadlands. We are in a full-on Tumult right now, one that this planet may very well fail by the end of the year.”

  “You mean the planet-cancer isn’t our biggest threat right now?” I asked intently, turning to look at the distant white sky above the tree line.

  “I mean the Hoarfolk will probably destroy the Chaos Wound on their own, after they’ve turned the rest of the Woadlands. Assuming they don’t find a use for it somehow.”

  “Great,” I said sarcastically. I began walking until I could see Alum, and I waved for him to gather everyone. The three Testifiers had informed me that they were already on their way back as well. “What are the Hoarfolk?” I asked.

  “They’re sort of my distant kin,” Breena asked uncomfortably. “I mean, as a sprite-folk. Not as a Satellite. Except that they Descend instead of Rise. They’re a bit like the Unseelie Fey from your Earth legends.”

  “So, I’m dealing with some kind of winter elves, then,” I clarified.

  “No, and people will think that you’re being racist if you say that,” my companion sighed. “Not that they’ll have time to tell you, because they’ll be spending their moments hiding from the Hoarfolk. And there is actually a race that call themselves winter elves. But only a few of the Hoarfolk look even a tiny bit like them. The common Hoarfolk look like your typical deformed monsters, just with cold skin, horns, or fur.”

  “My apologies.” I gave a sigh of my own. “I’ll try to be more careful about my words. Just educate me in advance, while we figure out how to save them.”

  We had reached the threshold of the cave. My people were all beginning to gather around. Alum nodded gravely at me.

  “Sorry for the wait,” I said to the group. “Now, friend, please help bring us all up to speed on what we need to do to save the world.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: TRESSPASSERS

  “So they are the ones bringing the cold,” Alum asked calmly, when Breena finished describing the Hoarfolk.

  “Correct,” my fairy friend nodded. She had shrunk to be small enough to fit on my shoulder, apparently choosing to sit. “They will also use it as a weapon. To what degree depends on the power and nobility of the perspective Hoarfolk, but expect your largest battles to happen with them inside a blizzard.”

  “That’s bad,” one of the other Gaelguard grunted. “The frost will kill any recent harvest the people have, as well as most of the animals they hunt. We may very well wind up fighting off an invasion only to watch them suffer through a famine immediately afterwards.”

  “And the cold will linger if you do drive them off,” Breena added. “If enough of the Hoarfolk nobles get a foothold here, they’ll begin to alter the weather permanently. They’ll begin to siege the world with indefinite cold storms.” She pointed again to the white cloud wall above the far-off tree line. It was much easier to notice now that we were on an elevated spot. I could see bolts of ice-blue lightning flicker from time to time in the screen of fog. The storm was likely weeks and weeks of hard travel away—assuming it didn’t move closer—but the power of it still made my neck hair rise.

  “Alright. So we need to find a way to deal with both this threat and the Chaos Wound, and quickly. How do we keep the storms from destroying the Woadlands, Breena?”

  “Their nobles generate the cold on their own, but the strongholds they bring make it permanent. We will have to undo the binding their palaces have formed with this land. She looked again at the monstrous weather phenomenon. “In theory, solving both disasters is simple: we just need to destroy their sources, and that’s something we should be able to do now. But there shouldn’t be a Tumult happening at all right now.” Breena shook her head. “They don’t just come out of nowhere. Stell has been spotting their warning signs for ages, and she hasn’t missed a single warning sign in centuries. I don’t understand how the Hoarfolk managed to swing an invasion so fast.”

  “Well, Avalon’s fallen about fifty years behind its sister worlds,” I pointed out. “So plenty of things could have changed since we were last invaded.”

  The three Testifiers nodded at that. I had probably spent close to six months being murdered over and over, before I became powerful enough to escape. But from what Rhodes’ people told me, our inability to stop Cavus and the Malus Members from conquering Avalon resulted in a failed Tumult, one that caused Avalon to somehow lose half a year for every death I died. But Breena shook her head at that.

  “The Hoarfolk might—key word, might—have been able to create a strong Challenge or a weak Trial in that time period. But fifty years isn’t long enough to go from ‘all is well, let’s have a party’ to ‘omgosh, massive invasion, plague, or weather bomb, we’re all gonna die!’ Well, not outside of Earth, anyway,” Breena hedged. “That’s the one place Stell can’t keep track of how so many Tumults are forming. Nobody’s really sure what to think about that planet. But out here in the Woadlands? Arguably the most sheltered of the sister worlds? Impossible,” my fairy friend declared. “Something else must be happening. And I’m afraid if we don’t figure out what then we could very well have a third Trial or Tumult suddenly spring out of nowhere. And that’s probably game over.”

  “Alright,” I said. “So we head for the elven tribe at the earliest opportunity, get all the information we can, destroy any advanced forces of the two incoming catastrophes on our way. Any further questions?”

  “How strong are our enemies?” Val raised her hand and asked. “The ones that we know about, I mean. Since it feels like we have enemies manipulating forces behind the scenes.”

  “Those shouldn’t be much of a mystery,” Eadric grunted. “The jackass Earthborn that followed you here have their claws in all kinds of things.”

  “Probably,” I hedged. “But it’s better to avoid too many assumptions right now, with all the surprises that keep popping up.”

  I remembered the very first Horde I had encountered long before everything had gone wrong.

  They had been the only ones expecting my arrival. Even Stell had been surprised the first time I showed up on Avalon. But the very first Pit champion had immediately surrendered to me, had been expecting me to lead them to greater conquest and greater acts of depravity. My refusal to do so was the reason I gained the title ‘traitor-prince.’

  All because someone had told them the Earthborn were coming, and would lead them.

  Which just meant I hadn’t found all of my enemies, yet.

  “Normally,” Breena said, answering Breyn’s original question, “their strength varies, but they should mirror the Horde in most progression, with large armies of weak, small, disposable troops, followed by normal and elite troops, and then finally their nobility, which can control the weather directly. I’d put their normal nobles to be as strong as Spawn, and their leaders can be close to Dark Icon-level, assuming they aren’t led by an actual Dark Icon. But I can’t guess that here, because they’re already being different from normal by establishing their footholds so fast.”

  “Explain why that always takes time,” I requested. “Is it an issue of growing undetected, like the Horde does, or something else?”

  “It’s a magical issue,” Breena explained. “They can’t breed in a new location like the Horde does. They have to bring their armies over from their Court. That always takes time and subterfuge, because if the Woadlands’ own Icons notice they’ll move to disrupt the process. They have to go undetected for decades before they can even risk creating a Trial, much less a Tumult.”r />
  “So they had to have help in both going unnoticed and in getting enough magic to come here faster,” Karim pondered. “What about the Chaos Wound? Is that a surprise as well?”

  “No, that one was pretty much expected,” Breena replied, flying up to float as she talked. “I mean, we didn’t know it was going to be an actual Chaos Wound, but we knew there was going to be a Chaos-type Trial happening in the Woadlands this century. It’s mostly on schedule, except for being a couple years early. But it couldn’t have caused enough distraction for the Hoarfolk to invade unnoticed. That means, once again, we’re either dealing with the Malus Members here or whoever helped plant a Horde Pit way back at the beginning.”

  “Probably both,” I decided.

  “Again,” Alum interjected, “the main problem I see is ensuring the cold does not starve the current tribes of my world.” He pointed to a nut-bearing tree nearby. “If there were still a great number of Woadfathers, it might not be a problem, as they will help the fruit-bearing plants recover quickly. But even if we act quickly the tribes may starve, since winter has passed and much of their stores may be gone.”

  “We have some contingencies for that,” I replied. “You saw grain farms on Avalon. Stell has been spreading the plants as often as she can while still going unnoticed, and I brought as much storage as I could fit, too. I also packed a number of basic Woadfather seeds.”

  “That will help.” The Gaelguard nodded. “But I suspect it will not be enough to stop famine spreading across multiple tribes.”

  “No it won’t,” I replied. “Which is why we need to move out, unless anyone has any more questions.”

  They didn’t, and since Karim had been able to secure the Pathway with a few cheap veiling and detection glyphs, we took off for the elven village, since every second counted.

  I tried not to think about the fact that I was racing against a clock I couldn’t even read.