“It was supposed to stay in use,” Breyn offered. “Truth be told, we were expecting someone from the Woadlands to come to our aid back then as well. But my guess is that the invaders sealed the Pathway from their end, and then were sealed themselves by Avalon’s magic. The Pathway must have been forgotten over time.”
“Is there anything else of interest we’ve found in the ruins?” I asked. Both of them shook their heads.
“Nope,” Val said firmly. “Alum’s people are still looking around, but from what I could see the place has been picked clean. I did my best search checks already.”
“Search checks?” Breyn cocked his head.
“Gaming reference,” I provided.
“It means I used my special Shadow magic to look for hidden objects on literally every nook and cranny in this place,” Val explained. “All I found was a belt buckle and an old tinderbox. And those are so rusty that I’d guess them both to be a century old, probably from this place’s last random visitor.”
“You were already that thorough?” I asked, surprised. “How long where we gone? Nevermind, one of you needs to go notify the rest of the team that Breena and I are back!”
“Done already,” Val said with a shrug. “Mindlink, remember?” She pointed to her temple.
I sighed in embarrassment.
“Right, thanks for being smarter than me, sis.” I covered my face, then added mentally, hi guys.
Morning, Eadric grunted.
Everything okay? Karim asked, concerned.
What were you doing in there alone with Breena? Weylin asked smugly.
Ha-ha, I sent sarcastically. Just fighting for our lives. Nothing serious.
Well I hope you both enjoyed yourselves, the elf continued, unconcerned.
Unfortunately not, I replied. I was being literal.
You guys do know I can use this thing too, right? Breena asked, confused.
Silence greeted her.
Ahem, Karim interrupted, inexplicably bothering to cough through the link. Are you both alright?
Oh we’re fantastic! Breena said enthusiastically. In fact, I’m better than ever now! Right, Wes?
Her tone was affectionate even through the mindlink. Karim remained silent, while the other two bastards started snickering.
Val says there are no nearby hostiles, and that the ruins nearby have been picked clean, I pressed on through the nonsense.
So far, Eadric grunted. They already built a perimeter to wait for you. Stonework looks defensible enough for a temporary camp.
There is some glyph work here, Karim said next, but it’s all spent. I could reactivate if I had to, but I don’t think it does anything but create light and provide heating.
I’m still scouting around us, Weylin answered last. I’ve seen a few signs of large animals, but no signs to indicate a large predator lives here. Wait… he said suddenly. Amend that. We are just outside the territory markings of some kind of predator… and I think I see elfsign. An old tribe of my race probably lives within a dozen or so miles of us.
Really? I asked, surprised. I didn’t know your race originally came from the Woadlands.
In fact, I could have sworn Stell said the oldest elven civilization came from the Lightborn Lands.
We probably don’t, Weylin answered. Our oldest civilizations are in the Lightborn Lands, but there’s a few of us on almost every world. In fact, we may even be related to the Avalonians.
For all you know, most of you are related to Wes, Karim offered in a neutral tone.
Could be, Eadric pondered. Especially on their mothers’ sides.
Weylin offered an angry retort that I tuned out while the other two Testifiers just chuckled in response.
Alright, I sent, changing the subject. Let me head outside and get my bearings. We can make this a temporary camp while we explore enough of the place to figure out where we are in relation to the rest of the Woadlands. Do we need to worry about the tribe of elves being hostile to us?
Depends, Eadric replied calmly. If most of the women recognize you, their husbands will shoot on sight.
Him? Weylin sounded incredulous. Be realistic. Our lord can’t even figure out how to get to first base with the ladies of Avalon. Pick another Earthborn.
Focus, I growled, a little more harshly than I meant to. Which meant they won. Elf tribe. Hostile or not hostile?
Not hostile, unless you show up naked, covered in blood, and immediately start harassing their women.
Agreed, Karim added. Harass the men only.
I tuned them out and began to walk outside the building. Val went somewhere to talk about something with Breena while Breyn walked with me to the cave entrance.
“So,” he said quietly. “Sounds like the discussion went well?”
“Stell has bound her Satellites to a magical oath to prevent them from disclosing her feelings about me,” I said bluntly. “So I am either lover material or permanently friendzoned, and to such a degree that she is afraid to disclose.”
“Friendzoned?” Breyn said in a shocked voice. Before I could explain what the term meant, he continued. “That sort of thing actually happens? It’s supposed to be a myth! Fathers use it to frighten young men into courting women properly!”
“In all fairness,” I said dryly. “Young men on my part of Earth have no idea how to court women properly, and young women have no idea how to handle our affections.” The reverse was probably true as well, but Breyn didn’t seem ready to hear that.
“That’s not—I mean I can’t—no.” Breyn suddenly shook his head. “Forgive me, my lord. I thought it would be a much simpler matter, like courtships in the Woadlands are. What matters is that you have done your part.”
As I walked outside the caves the sunlight struck me clear in the face. I was confronted by a world that wasn’t shrouded in mists but bright sunlight and green leaves. The whole forest hummed with an amount of life Avalon still couldn’t match, despite being free of civilization all this time. Life, the branches and shrubbery rustled at me with the wind’s lips. Life, the birds in the trees all sang. Life, the cracking branches on the ground said here and there. Life, a woman on another planet had begged me all those months ago to help her protect.
“No, I haven’t,” I said, finally making a connection I should have made ages ago. “My part is to fight to save all the worlds she cares about, including the one I’m standing in. My part is to make her people safe, and make her safe so that she can actually think about something other than her own survival.”
I reminded myself that I wasn’t in high school anymore where courting a girl meant taking her to dinner, as well as a bunch of other rules that kept changing because no one on Earth can apparently agree on how men and women should treat each other. I was in a group of worlds just like the old video games my father made me play, where the hero had to fight alongside the woman he loved, complementing her strengths and negating her weaknesses. Now courtship meant battling through dozens of different worlds against dragons, pig men, and dinosaurs, so that by the time he rescued her he had also made the world a better place in the process, giving her a safer kingdom to live in. If I really wanted to let Stell know how I felt about her, then it was time to throw down literal blood and sweat, and battle and win until I could give her seven brighter, better worlds. Worlds where her people were safe and she herself was free of creeps like Cavus.
That was the courtship right now, I decided. And somehow, it was about damn time.
The wind rustled all the leaves around me as I kept walking outside.
“Challenge accepted,” the leaves whispered quietly. “The Woadlands bear witness.”
Breyn looked up, but I kept my eyes forward, walking over to Alum. The older Gaelguard was peering into the far-off sky with an intent, troubled expression.
“The others tell me we are safe for now, but I’m guessing you just found a problem.”
The Gaelguard nodded.
“The flora is much like it was all those thousa
nds of years ago. There are no Woadfathers, but I had already been told of that. But something is still amiss, unless the seasons of this land no longer number four.”
“I’m no local,” I answered carefully. “But everyone I know insists that the Woadlands still has four distinct seasons, especially in this region. Spring, summer, fall, and winter, in that order.”
“I see three seasons,” the bearded warrior replied. “Happening in tandem. Behold, spring.” He pointed the flowering plants all around us. “Behold, winter.” He pointed again, and far off into the distance I saw massive clouds forming a line for the largest cold front I had ever been taught to recognize. Beneath them, and barely visible from the shadow the clouds provided, a solid white stretched down, as if the ground below was completely wrapped in snow or ice.
It was a forest-killing cold, and on a level far beyond what I had been taught to believe as natural for this planet. That made it a supernatural disaster, one on the level of Trial or Tumult.
“And finally,” Alum said gravely, pointing to a dead tree some distance away, “behold... blood.”
I was about to stupidly inform him that blood didn’t actually count as a season before my eye caught the details of the tree he was pointing at, one just past the area our patrols covered. It looked withered and old, out of place compared to the rest of the foliage around it. What looked further out of place was the tumorous mass of flesh growing on its side, pulsing in rhythm with the blood-colored sap dripping from bark-less patches of the decaying plant.
Not blood-colored, Teeth insisted inside. Look again.
I did so, reaching out with a sense gained by my Blood magic. I confirmed it; actual blood, and not tree-sap, was dripping from the rotting plant. It wasn’t dying. It was mutating, into something that was neither plant nor animal. Looking at that, and as well as the white wall looming in the distance, I realized I knew on a basic level what the Woadlands were facing.
This planet was facing two Trials at the same time.
#
Foreign contaminant detected, my mindscreen chirped inside. Contaminant is a Chaos-based creature designed to mutate and infest other life forms, most likely engineered from similar life forms found on the planet Earth. Such an invasion suggests the formation of a Trial or Tumult.
Found on Earth? I thought, confused. Is my system telling me that viruses or cancer can only be found on Earth?
It was a problem I would have to solve for another day, because as I stared at it, the tree slowly began to shift, a bloody branch pointing in my direction.
“Is this the only bloody plant your people have discovered?” I asked calmly, keeping my eyes on the corrupted tree. The Gaelguard nodded, also remaining calm.
“We’ve just now noticed this one, but if there are any more then they’re much farther out. I think this creature is alone.”
“Well, let’s kill it and have Breena look at it,” I decided, walking closer to it. Since my mindscreen had identified the life form as a threat, and one linked to a Trial at that, there was absolutely no mistaking the bloody tumor as anything but hostile. The only reason not to kill it was to see if it could provide information on its own, and that was easy to check.
“Hey, giant clump of Lyme disease! Can you talk?”
The tree pulled up a giant mass of roots and moved towards me, but other than that it remained silent.
So far I had confirmed that the monster was mobile and hostile. That level of research would have to do for now. Breena probably knew more anyway.
I saw no more of the bloody plants behind the slowly advancing tree, and looking at everything around it failed to trigger any new warnings from my mindscreen. I withdrew my axe, and cast a new Air spell I had learned upon reaching the Journeyman rank. The magic would help guide any missile weapon I used to the proper target and even add a bit of force to the impact. I hurled the giant tomahawk, once again rewarded with the angry whistling in its wake. The blade impacted the tumor on the walking tree in a gory explosion, and then the weapon flew back toward me, the splattered tumor impaled on it.
“Gross,” I said out loud, and fired a scorching ray of Fire magic into the thing to make sure it was dead.
Hey Breena, I sent through the mindlink. I think I found something you need to look at.
Aw, Wes, she sent back, still in a cheerful mood from earlier. Did you find me a present?
Um, I replied, not sure how to handle that question. Does making a giant bloody mess count as a present?
If I have to help clean it up, definitely not, she sent back. Hold on, I’ll be right there.
I looked at the tumor more closely, not really having anything else better to do right now. I reached back into my Blood magic, feeling that there was a spell that would let me examine it better. As I concentrated, pieces of the spell came to mind, but it wasn’t enough to make a complete formula for incantation. I grew frustrated, because it felt like I was trying to do this without half my brain.
Remember me? Teeth offered. Let me scoop around in my genetic memories. Got it. Here’s the other half.
The rest of the gestures and syllables poured into my mind.
It’s a little weird that you can sometimes do stuff like that, I told the new guy.
It’s a little weird that there are two of us stuck in here to begin with, he shot back. We should probably ask our girlfriend to help us figure this out.
She’s not our girlfriend until we at least save this world, I answered. And she has the opposite problem: one personality, multiple bodies. Let’s talk about this after I cast the spell.
Teeth agreed, and I carefully performed the incantation while I kept the bloody blob on the far end of my axe.
The Challenger has discovered the Blood Magic Spell Know thy Scent. The Challenger will be able to gain awareness of a particular blood sample’s properties. The degree of information will depend on the Challenger’s Blood Magic Rank, the size of the sample, and the time spent concentrating on the spell.
I spent at least thirty seconds examining the angry cancer mass, the magic able to understand it despite the fact that I had cauterized the tissue. I could now tell that it wasn’t exactly a parasite, but a symbiote. It took vitality and matter from its host, but it also awakened the host’s vital guard, mana, and stamina pools, allowing it to access abilities it normally couldn’t. But the tissue didn’t change the host enough to be able to use those abilities without hurting the tree. It also projected its influence upon the host, making it desire to use those new powers, but not able to recognize the damage its new gifts would cause to itself. So in terms of overall benefit, maybe parasite was a better word to describe it after all. Fortunately, though, it was dead right now, so it couldn’t try to do the same thing to me.
And yet, I thought to myself, examining the dead creature further. There is still power in this thing’s blood.
“Okay, Wes!” Breena said as she zipped over. “I’m here! What did you want to show—OH MY FAIRY SPACE-BALLS WES WHERE DID YOU EVEN GET THAT! QUIT WAVING IT AROUND!”
I didn’t know how to comply with her, because even though the thing was gross and probably a health hazard, it seemed like an even worse idea to just leave it lying around. I settled for just holding my weapon hand a little steadier.
Breena had apparently gotten over her shock, and she began to zip carefully around the dead tissue, casting some kind of detection magic and angrily muttering something about not being able to leave me alone for five minutes, and how therapy for fairy guides still really needed to be a thing.
“Okay,” she said after another moment, taking a deep breath. “First of all, you were smart enough to use fire to make sure it stayed dead, so good job.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “Do they regenerate if they’re not burned?”
“More or less. They have high vital guard pools for their size, and they can regenerate extremely quickly if they’re not destroyed completely. Fire isn’t the only way, but it’s usually the cheapest, faste
st way to make sure you’ve destroyed enough of the thing to keep it down.”
“What are they supposed to be called?” I asked. “The mindscreen didn’t give me an official name this time.”
“That’s because you’re not able to see the whole organism yet,” Breena replied. “But this is a piece of a Chaos Wound. It’s the leftover matter of a powerful Chaos-type creature that was slain but not completely destroyed. So the tissue itself is desperately trying to survive without the rest of its body.”
“So it tries to take over other creatures to make a new body or something?” I asked, to make sure I was following.
“Not creatures, plants,” Breena shook her head. “It can’t mutate enough to infect animal life. But if it starts spreading across enough plants and terrain, it will form a body of its own. Then it will be able to create its own animal guardians, that will work like giant white blood cells. At that point—” she took another breath—“the Woadlands will have moved from a Trial to a full-blown Tumult, and Stell will usually have needed to have a Challenger handy to help the locals overcome the threat.”
“Which is my job anyway,” I answered, looking at the dead mass of tissue. “What happens if the Woadlands fail the Tumult?”
“All or most of it turns into a giant mass of Chaos matter, that either sustains itself indefinitely to try and infest other worlds, or will burn itself out and die, taking all or most of the planet with it in the process.”
“That’s terrifying,” I replied.
“Yeah.” The little fairy nodded. “It’s another reason why we take the ‘kill it with fire’ approach. Where did you find this piece of it?”
“It came from that tree over there.” I pointed to the twisted plant behind me. “Alum noticed it after they finished scouting the area. Should there be any more of this around?” I asked, looking about and trying not to be too worried about this place turning into a giant cancer planet. But Breena shook her head.
Woad Children (Challenger's Call Book 3) Page 29
