Brace For the Wolves

by Nathan Thompson

  “Fine,” I sighed and shrugged. “Back to your earlier question. You are all allowed to eat. I forbid anyone to starve to death. I’m asking about food because I grabbed and summoned as much as I could in a hurry, and I didn’t get a good count of how much is left. I also could only grab basic rations such as grain and dried meat, and I don’t want people to live off of preserved food forever. I’d like people to have access to three meals a day, but I don’t know if that’s possible because I don’t know how long it will take the rations to run out.”

  The Stellar War’s system of rewards was strange to me. I could summon a bit more food to save lives, thanks to the Infamy I gained from being a notable leader for my faction, from establishing a base of operations, and from killing so many sergeants that belonged to Rhodes’ faction. But the amount was limited, and I wanted to save it as a last resort.

  Especially because I had to kill so many people to get what little I had.

  “Three meals is… generous, my lord,” the woman replied, proving once again that the other worlds were imperfect societies. “But if we ration the food down to once a day for all but the young or weak, our supply should last for a month.”

  “Great,” I said, rejecting all of my mind’s offered expletives. “So I have just enough food to keep people half-hungry, for a month.”

  “I am sorry my lor—”

  “No,” I interrupted. “Not your fault. Be formal with me if you have to, but do not apologize for things that are not your fault. You got this role because you were one of the only people brave enough to talk to me. I need you to keep that courage. Everyone needs you to keep that courage. So instead of apologizing for a problem you didn’t cause, help me find a solution to it. Can you think of any ways to get us more food? Anything at all?”

  The twenty-something year-old woman looked down and bit her lip. For a moment she didn’t speak, and I thought she would go back into that same shell that everyone else but Gabby went into when I came around, to where they felt intimidated by me and tried to avoid me. But then she squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and looked back up at me.

  “We need to hunt and forage,” she said firmly. “You need to hunt and forage, my Lord Wes. No one else has ever been to this strange world before. This is a land of magic and legends, and it frightens us. We also lack the means to protect ourselves, and so we must rely on you to finish finding what is safe for us. Once my Lord Wes determines where we may be permitted to go, and what we may be permitted to use for food, we can help provide for ourselves, and provide you your rightful tithe as well. But until then—” she took another breath— “we must trust that you will perform your obligations to protect us. Just as you have been doing so far,” she added quickly.

  “Thank you,” I said. I probably should have thought of all that on my own, but oh well. One thing at a time. “That reminds me: if anyone asks about safety, let them know the monsters are still out there, but they’ve been driven away from the edge of our shelter.” I saw the relief flash across her face, letting me know I had been right to let them know I was at least doing something to keep them safe. “Still, just like you said, everyone needs to stay safe, so no one is to go poking around near the clearing.” I turned to look at the bright-haired, pointy-eared man next to me. “She’s right about me having the most experience with Avalon, but I barely know more than the basics about wilderness survival. But I get a strong ‘live-off-the-land, outdoor-musician’ vibe from you, despite your non-rugged good looks.”

  “The Challenger is correct,” Weylin said with a small bow. “I am both handsome and an accomplished woodsman. Although I confess I hold no romantic attraction to you, however much I appreciate the compliment.”

  “I didn’t mean—” I coughed.

  “Does my Lord Wes prefer the same gender?” Emalee asked, blinking her eyes rapidly. “I had not known. Shall I discreetly search among the menfolk for an agreeable companion?”

  “No, definitely not,” I emphasized. “And I truly hope you were kidding with that offer. Wait a minute,” I said, as my eyes narrowed. “We have absolutely no able-bodied men here whatsoever. You had to have known that. You were kidding with me.”

  “I beg my gracious lord’s forgiveness, and will do much better at obeying my lord’s command for informality while still offering the proper amount of respect.” She curtseyed again, but there was a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “Does my lord require anything further of me?”

  I shook my head.

  “Come find me later today if you can think of anything else we need to address for our people. Otherwise, you’re free to go.”

  The woman nodded, and backed away, shooting me a playful smirk as she departed.

  “What the hell was that?” I demanded. “She went from ‘please great lord, let us have some food and not die,’ to joking about my sexual preferences in less than a minute!”

  “My Lord Wes has an agreeable and friendly presence, when he is not wreathed in eldritch power or covered in the blood of tyrants. It puts his subjects at ease as soon as they realize that they need not fear for their lives,” Weylin said with another bow. “That same kind nature gives me the confidence to turn down my lord’s offer of courtship. I thank my lord in advance for respecting my wishes and not forcing me into his bed.”

  “You sneaky sarcastic bastard,” I said as I glared at my elven friend’s shit-eating grin. “Exactly how long have you been waiting for a moment like that?”

  “Not long, my Lord Wes,” the bard shrugged. “It usually takes the others far longer to make such a careless mistake.”

  I sighed again.

  “Let’s just go get Karim and the others. We still need to find more food and secure the area.”

  I knew we needed to get Breena too, and I dreaded the act of pulling her away from all the children with her. But to my utter surprise, every single one of them was down for a nap. I arrived to find a lot of mothers and aunts directing grateful, if slightly frightened, looks to the little pink light buzzing around. She saw me, made a tiny way, and bobbed and buzzed over to me, growing larger as she did so.

  “Oh-my-gosh-that-was-so-fun!” she chattered at me. “I-haven’t-had-this-much-fun-since-Guineve-made-giant-strawberry-triple-chocolate-cake-rolls-Wes-did-you-know-that-human-kids-could-be-so-much-fun-how-come-we-never-brought-children-here-before-Wes-we-have-to-tell-Stell—”

  “Breena,” I tried to interrupt.

  “I-mean-it-Wes-I-have-never-been-able-to-spend-this-much-energy-doing-fun-stuff-it’s-like-training-you-only-without-the-stress-and-pressure-to-perform-so-I-guess-it’s-not-like-training-you-at-all—”

  “Breena,” I tried again.

  “Seriously-Wes-you’re-all-like-work-work-work-but-the-children-were-all-play-play-play-how-come—”

  “Breena!” I snapped.

  “What, Wes?” Breena demanded. “I’m floating right here. For the third time, what do you want?”

  “Third ti—” I stopped and sighed, covering my face with one hand. Remember the strategy for handling the ladies of Avalon, I reminded myself. Just take everything in stride. “We need to finish exploring the shelter, Breena.”

  “Oh, right, that,” the little fairy said as she bobbed in the air. “Yeah, we should totally do that. Especially since Stell never finished checking this place out.”

  “Yeah, I think I mentioned how much that bothers me,” I replied. “Stell’s been here for at least a thousand years right? Wouldn’t she want to know everything she could about emergency measures like this place?”

  “She looked into it, and determined that it wasn’t dangerous, and that there wasn’t much here. And we weren’t expecting to need it,” she added uncomfortably. “The three of us were kind of the only ones who lived here.”

  When she put it that way, this magical paradise suddenly felt a lot lonelier.

  “But we have like soooo many people now!” the little fairy gushed. “So of course we should go check it out! Follow me, tall peopl
e!”

  Eadric had snorted at that comment, but the three of them fell in step behind our tiny guide.

  “Let’s see,” the fairy droned. “Now I was only able to sneak in here once, but there should still be some fruit-bearing trees over in that section…” She waved a tiny glowing hand over to the right. “And a lot of game animals liked to graze near the pond over in that direction.” She waved again.

  We found several spots where we could obtain fruit and a few spots where we could find animals safe enough to hunt. There were also several small ponds that Breena assured us was good drinking water, although we’d need to work out a system for that. It felt weird asking about drinking water when there was so much mist around, but when Avalon assured me that the mist was one of the ways it projected its awareness, I realized the problem with my logic. It would be a really bad idea to collect and drink droplets that helped compose a planetary super-intelligence.

  The main problem, though, was that we had no real starches or carbs except for our temporary rations. Breena assured me that her magic could help the local vegetables grow for us, but there weren’t any nearby plants that could work for wheat, corn, or rice. Breena said that Guineve had her cooking ingredients in her pantry, but that spot was far outside the shelter. Our problem was securing the two main ingredients of any habitable location: sustenance and security. No settlement ever worked without at least those two concerns addressed.

  “Well,” Breena hedged when I explained my problem. “That’s kind of everything we could find. There just weren’t any grain plants in this section of forest. And if there were any weapons or equipment we would have already given you them.”

  “Yeah… I know,” I admitted. I remembered the issues of keeping Avalon armed in the past. Stell didn’t collect weapons until she was ready to Call a Challenger to use them, otherwise they would rust if they were mundane or be wasted if they were magical. Since she hadn’t expected me to come here on my own power, there hadn’t been any weapons available for me on my first Challenge.

  “We’ll just have to go deeper in,” I decided. “It’s not like we don’t have the time to completely look this place over.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Breena asked nervously.

  “What do you mean?” I replied. “We need to secure a starch for people to eat, and we literally have nothing else to do. We’re not strong enough to face the Horde camped right outside our front door. If that doesn’t change, we die.”

  “True,” Breena hedged, twirling her tiny fingers together. “But…”

  “But what?” I demanded.

  “This place gets… scary, further in.”

  “Scary?” I was incredulous. “Scary to people who have spent the last bunch of centuries preventing literally dozens of planetary apocalypses? On several different worlds?”

  “It’s a little scary,” Breena confided. “Not super scary, but… we were always discouraged from exploring further in.”

  “By what?” I demanded. “Is there a guard beast or something? Guys, I really need to know if there is something dangerous lurking in our magical secret shelter. Especially since we literally have nowhere else to go right now. Breena? Avalon? Can we all be super real for a moment and answer that question?”

  “Nothing’s ever tried to harm any of us when we went in,” Breena affirmed. “But it gets… weird.”

  “Okay,” I sighed. “That’s still a little vague, but maybe Avalon can fill me in further. Avalon? Is there anything else hiding in here with us?”

  “Data not found,” the nearby mists intoned.

  I groaned. My face needed another hug from my palm.

  “Guys,” I began. “Days like this are the reason Patient Me dies a little every day. I really, really want them to stop happening.”

  “We mourn for you, Challenger,” Karim said dryly.

  “Deeply,” Eadric added in a deadpan voice. “And with many tears.”

  “And the saddest of songs,” Weylin finished, twirling the fingers on one hand, as if he were conducting. “All played on the very tiniest of instruments.”

  I turned to give them my deadliest glare, one that had forced answers out of the hardened torturers in the prison we had escaped from. The bastards didn’t even blink.

  “Why?” I finally asked. “Just yesterday, everyone was hailing me as the legendary lost Challenger and trembling before my terrible power. How did we get from there,” I gestured, “to this?”

  “Because that was yesterday,” Eadric supplied helpfully. “Today you’re back to being the new guy.”

  Hold on, Patient Me said inside with a bloody cough. I can still handle this. Let me take over again.

  “Breena,” I said after a quick internal count to ten. “We’re going further in. If there’s anything else you know, now’s the time to explain.”

  “I don’t think I can,” the little sprite nervously. “It’s probably just better for you all to see for yourselves.”

  “Fine,” I sad. “Let’s just go.”

  We walked deeper into the magic woods. I noticed an immediate change in Breena. She no longer zipped forward, drawing attention to every rare flower or tree. Instead she buzzed just a half-dozen feet ahead of us, and as we went further in she flew back to perch on my shoulder.

  I almost commented, but then I felt her place her hand on the back of my neck, and I realized that she wasn’t trying to hide on me so much as she was trying to protect me. Just in case, the gesture said.

  It melted through me, just a little. In spite of my own weirdness. But it also helped me focus on my surroundings a little more. Somehow.

  Avalon was a place rich in plant life. There were trees, shrubs, bushes and other plants all over the place. At first, this part of the planet was no exception. But then…

  “Breena? Weylin?” I asked the two people in our group that I gathered to be nature experts. “Is this normal?” I gestured at the surrounding plant life.

  The woodsman shook his head.

  “Not like this.”

  The trees and plants remained. Their branches and leaves created a canopy over our heads. But everything near us on the ground level was dead. Dead branches poked out at us like giant, crooked fingers, even as their taller brethren provided us with leaves and shade. Bushes and vines would fade in life, with the side facing us being rich and green, but the other half of it dead and brown.

  “It gets worse further in,” Breena whispered. “But that’s still not the really creepy part.”

  “What’s the really creepy—wait, never mind,” I said. “Weapons and magic at the ready, everyone.”

  I immediately cast my enhancement magic, and this time I felt my magic crawl up to include Breena in the protection as well. She closed her eyes and hummed, and something else swept over me. My mind-screen informed me that the spell Fair-Folk’s Grace had also been cast on me, raising my Charisma and Dexterity by a small amount. I guess that meant we could share personal spells now. Cool.

  “Excellent idea, New Guy,” Weylin intoned, reaching for his bow. “I mean, Leader.”

  Ass, I thought quietly as I checked my own weapons and pulled the shield from my back.

  We walked a few feet further in, with no more changes other than the increasing amount of local decay.

  Then I heard it.

  “Don’t.”

  We all stopped immediately and looked for the source of the young feminine voice.

  “Hello?” I called out.

  No answer.

  “This is it,” Breena whispered. “This is the really creepy part.”

  I took another step forward.

  “No,” the voice said again. “Please, don’t.”

  “Don’t what?” I asked. This time the voice answered.

  “Don’t come closer.”

  “Who are you?” I asked, trying to be diplomatic. “Where are you? We’re stranded in this forest and have nowhere else to go. Can we talk to you? Were we trespassing before?”

 
; No answer.

  “Avalon,” I said out loud. “Identify the previous speaker and reveal their location.”

  “Scanning,” the planetary intelligence replied. “Scan complete. No speaker found.”

  “But I just heard them talk!” I protested. “Hello?” I called out. “Who are you?”

  “Origin of the voice is approximately thirty meters ahead,” Avalon informed me. “No life forms found at that location.”

  “So they might have moved,” I decided, choosing to believe the least creepy of all the possible answers. “I’m sorry, but we’re going to keep moving forward,” I said out loud. “We don’t want to violate your privacy but I have people that depend on my finding them food or a safe way out of these woods. But if you can direct me to either of those resources then I promise to do everything I can to try and comply with your demands.”

  Still no answer.

  “Alright,” I stated. “Forward it is. Avalon, provide directions to the speaker’s former location.”

  “Command confirmed.”

  The familiar yellow arrow appeared in my mind-screen, and I used that arrow to steer me toward where the sound originated from.

  Sorry, I said in my mind. I don’t do well with invisible creepy neighbors.

  We were halfway to the location when the voice spoke again.

  “No. Turn back.”

  “Avalon!” I snapped. “Identify the origin of that voice!”

  “Voice originated approximately thirty meters ahead,” the planet provided. “No life forms detected in that area.”

  I swore.

  “Everybody stop running,” I commanded. “We can’t catch something that’s not there. Unless your magic can do something?”

  “If that thing is what we think it is,” Karim began quietly, “I could write a script to keep it out, and Eadric could sculpt something to keep it at bay, but neither of us have the time or materials. Not for something like this.”

  “Is this thing what I think it is?” I asked.