Woad Children (Challenger's Call Book 3)

by Nathan Thompson

  The two idiots flanking the guy in charge glowered at me. They were unanimously ignored.

  “Yes, I know,” the local management dismissed. “You left that big-breasted MILF bitch behind as defense.”

  He doesn’t get to call her that, Teeth growled inside me, as the fairies flying behind us quietly asked each other what a MILF was. I agreed, but waited for the moron to finish hanging himself.

  “But even if you managed to find and save her, she’s going to be wounded from before. It’s been a few days here at the most, so she couldn’t possibly have enough time to recover.”

  “Even wounded, she can still kick my ass,” I snorted. “She should be able to handle you idiots without a problem.”

  But Guineve isn’t wounded anymore… Breena sent, then trailed off. Oh! Right! We’re still tricking them!

  I privately wondered how fairies could be so oblivious and still be so good at causing mischief. But then Skinny Idiot began speaking again.

  “We went easy on you before, Cripplehead! Everyone was tired of slapping you around!”

  “No you weren’t,” I said calmly. “You people were simple creatures with simple hobbies.”

  “Regardless,” Asshole Manager replied, “she won’t be facing just us. In fact, even if you somehow retain control of the portal system, the Horde have their own ways into your planet. And they’re bringing one of their most powerful servants, a monster raised to Icon status solely to hunt for the so-called traitor-prince. Your little MILF bitch won’t be able to handle the Raw-Mawed Wolf…”

  “That’s the second time you’ve called her that,” I said quietly. “Are you sure you want to keep talking about her like that?”

  “And when he finds out you’re no longer there, he’ll devour the other prisoners you rescued in his anger, and deliver your pretty friend straight over to our Umbral Lord,” the jerk continued, though he adjusted the language he used concerning Guineve. “So you’re going to have to decide whether you want to stay here, let all of your fellow prisoners die and let Lord Cavus do whatever it is he wants to do to the Starsown’s Satellite, or leave here to try and somehow deal with Avalon’s threat.” He turned his gaze over to the elves, fairies, and Woadfolk. “And even if you somehow survive the Dark Icon in your back yard, you’re still doomed. In the first place, because even if you can somehow help your oldest crush deal with a nascent demigod, the Horde leadership will just raise up a stronger Dark Icon, one probably on the level of a full-fledged deity, to deal with you next. In the second place, you don’t have the time to save both worlds at once. The Woadlands will fall to one of the two catastrophes in less than six months, local time, and both of them are getting stronger by the day. By the time you come back, the Tumults will either have run their course or have gotten too powerful for you to be able to interfere. Then this world will fall, like Avalon originally did, except that this time you won’t be able to reverse the process. And then we’ll deliver your second crush, that saucy little Scottish bitch, straight to Cavus ourselves, and get power from it.”

  “Will ye now?” Merada snorted, fingering her spear irritably.

  Can I stab ‘em yet? she asked me over the mindlink.

  Gotta make sure we can get the key, I replied apologetically. Sorry. They won’t be able to talk much longer.

  “Is that all of your questions?” the Malus man asked arrogantly, hands in his pockets. “Because I’ve got plenty of work I need to be doing.”

  “Yeah,” I began to say, but little Petal suddenly shouted.

  “No!” she screeched. “Why are you even doing this? Why are you trying to take so much from us? You’re Earthborn! We used to trust you! We would have given anything you really needed! And why would you want to hurt us all so badly? We don’t even know you! We don’t even know who you people are!”

  The prick grinned at her.

  “That’s cute. She’s adorable, Wes. I’ll do you a favor and answer her questions. Taking is better than asking, because then no one can tell you no. And you did try to tell us no when we asked for your lives, freedom, and bodies. And we hurt you all for the same reason we kept hurting him.” He tilted his head toward me. “This isn’t Earth. When you make someone else fail, you’re rewarded with an appropriate amount of power. Making your whole world fail will probably make us gods, or close enough. Finally, the women your own pet Earthborn keeps crushing over are already spoken for, and one of them happens to be hiding here. So this is all arguably her fault as well.”

  “Bastards,” Merada growled, tightening her grip on her spear.

  “And don’t worry about our names, little sprite,” the man finished. “You’ll be calling us all master soon enough.”

  “Actually, I’ll take that one, Petal,” I spoke up.

  “You don’t know our names either,” the arrogant asshole replied.

  “Sure I do,” I said, pointing at the larger one of the two flunkies. “That’s Drowned Dick,” I said, remembering the way he died. “That’s Fried Fred,” I pointed to the skinny one, who I had blown up back on Avalon. “And finally…” I said, pausing as I realized I hadn’t killed the guy yet, so I didn’t have a name for him. “Don’t tell me, it’s on the tip of my tongue…”

  “You never even—”

  “Felicia,” I finally answered as I snapped my fingers. “His name’s Felicia.”

  “Felicia,” the newly named Malus Member started to sputter. “Who the hell is—”

  “Exactly, bitch,” I answered before turning to my people. “Preparations are finished. Start attacking at any time.”

  “You can’t stop us from returning to Earth!” Felicia snapped, slashing his hand down in front of him. There was a pulse of invisible magic, but nothing else happened.

  “The ward held,” Eadric grunted cheerfully, raising up the figurines he crafted. “We’re good, boss.”

  Felicia’s eyes widened in confusion.

  “How…” he sputtered. But arrows and fiery darts were already slamming into Drowned Dick and Fried Fred.

  “Remember how you guys captured me, and then found a way to prevent me from escaping torture by returning to my original body all those times?” I asked quietly, hurling my axe into Felicia’s kneecap. He tried to dodge, but the weapon tracked him and sliced straight into the bone. “It turns out your people left notes. That my people were able to read and then reverse-engineer.”

  That wasn’t entirely true, because I had accessed the notes myself on one of the rare times I had seized control of the device implanted into my brain. But there was no need for them to know that.

  Felicia screamed as he fell, clutching his leg. I ignored him.

  “Now the only thing I really need from you guys, other than your deaths, is the key you’ve locked the other captives up with. The first one who tells me where it is—”

  “He has it!” Drowned Dick and Fried Fred both screamed at once, pointing to Felicia.

  “Thank you both,” I answered as I kept walking forward, moving slow enough to recast my signature Lightning Bolt spell. “I’ll be sure and recognize you two by giving you better death names. Probably Pierced Perry and Punctured Pete.” Felicia raised his hand to try and summon his own magic, so I blasted the limb apart. The elves and fairies worked to disable the limbs of all three Malus Men. When they had finished, the Gaelguard walked forward to restrain them physically and help me search them.

  “Nothing of real value,” Alum answered as they stripped the men of their gear and armor. “Their equipment isn’t quite as good as our own, though their metalwork is impressive. The two lackeys were telling the truth about the maiden-named one having the only key.” He handed me an iron key.

  “This key will work for every lock?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Yes!” one of the formerly loyal lackeys shouted. “We’ve used it that way! It’s magic! I don’t know how it works!”

  “Why were ye even bothering—” Merada began, but the other idiot interrupted her.

&nb
sp; “Slaves! Bound for Earth! Our leaders back home can’t get enough of your people! It keeps our bosses rich! Passes the right laws!”

  The beautiful amazon’s face darkened.

  “It’s how we traffic them now!” the other one shouted. “Always in the leftmost tunnel of the Horde Pits! The right tunnel has prisoners for the local monsters! The key will work on those cages as well!” he shouted quickly, and desperately. “And it will work for every dungeon you find!”

  “Idiot, don’t tell him that!” Felicia shouted. “What’s gotten into you two?”

  “It’s because they died before,” I answered calmly, walking up to Drowned Dick. “It’s the most horrible feeling a person ever experiences. It’s not something your vital guard can help you get past. A single horrible death can even change you,” I said, pulling out my flaming spatha and stabbing the man through the temple, twisting to give a quick, efficient death. “Even break you. A second one can be all it takes for you to come back knowing that you didn’t really make it, that you left part of your mind back there, still screaming on the cold, bloody floor. More than that increases the risk, but in a way, it’s irrelevant,” I said, walking toward the other person that had accepted my ‘reduced sentence.’ “Because after you’ve died even once, you know that no matter how many times you come back, you’re forever only a single step away from whatever edge all of the nightmares climb up from.”

  “Speaking of nightmares,” Val spoke up. “Let me have this one. Please.”

  She was my adopted sister, so of course I said yes right now.

  “Thanks,” she said quietly, walking up to Charred Charlie. His face whitened as he looked up at her.

  “You,” he gasped. “You’re here? Why?”

  “Because I wanna be,” Val said with a shrug. “Why aren’t you happy right now?” she asked, her voice darkening. “You were always talking about how much you wanted to see me before.”

  “That was,” he gasped, the pain of his wounds still bothering him. “I never—”

  “Got the chance,” Val finished for him. “But you and the other sick freaks would always tell me what you’d do to me if you caught me alone. Even after you made me lie about my adopted dad—after you killed my dad,” she growled. “So I’m going to keep my brother’s promise. But I want you to know, that if you ever do to a girl, no matter how young or how old, what you threatened to do to me, then I will find you—” she stabbed him somewhere in the chest I couldn’t see—“and I will make sure that in your next death you will go over that cliff.” He gasped, and she leaned forward. “This is the last clean death you ever get.”

  Her other blade took him through the eye, and he went still. Val closed her eyes and shook for a moment, then she pulled her weapons free of the corpse. “Thanks, Wes,” she said after a moment.

  I wanted to check on her, but now wasn’t the time. I had dozens, if not hundreds of people to take care of right after I dealt with the last idiot.

  “You’re making a mistake!” Mr. Felicia screamed in a cracked voice. “The Horde will take your people apart! Then they’ll come find you here, and they’ll make you watch it all over again! You can’t win, Malcolm! You were never going to—”

  “Beg yer pardon, mister Challenger,” Merada interrupted. “But I’ll get the next one, if ye don’t mind?”

  “Go for it,” I said, turning to walk over to the Pit. It would save me a couple seconds at least. I heard a wet thunk behind me, and Felicia let out a pained whimper.

  “I want ye to understand something,” she said in her calm, dangerous voice. “No man, and no creature disguised as a man, determines who owns me. Or me people,” she said, and I thought I heard the messy sound my own spear made whenever it twisted into flesh. Felicia made another pained whimper, and I knew that his vital guard had been completely exhausted. “Go tell the rest of yer ilk that message. I don’t care if yer lord beasty hears it either, because I’ll never be his. That’s it, then. Bye, Felicia.”

  I heard one more thunk as I walked up to the Pit’s edge, and then I felt a sense of satisfaction radiate out from the Woad Princess. Val hurried over next to me, already reaching into her pack. The Pit rippled backwards, as if it was trying to pull away from me. A bubble on its tar-like surface suddenly popped, creating one of the belch-like sounds that the Horde Pits used to speak.

  “Why?” it asked. “Want… serve.”

  “I know,” I answered. I had already had this conversation at least four times by now, two of which happened after Raw-Maw’s death. “You always say that.”

  “These… your prey…” the bubbles belched. “Why… still take?”

  “Because they are already mine,” I answered, looking at the bodies. They seemed still at the moment, which was rare. Horde Pits either dissolved most of their victims’ bodies or kept them in a state of suspended, suffering animation, but these currently didn’t seem to be in any pain.

  “No,” the Pit quivered, “not ready. Too soon to take them. Cannot please you yet.”

  “Their suffering does not please me,” I answered. I wished I didn’t have to talk to this disgusting, sadistic thing, but I’ve found that it’s easier to thoroughly destroy a Pit after it relaxes its guard, and talking to it always relaxes at least part of its awareness. “Neither does their fear, or their slavery, or their shame. Release them.”

  “Not right,” the Pit complained. “Father says… you not right.”

  “He’s not your father,” I said as Val finished opening her pack. “You used to be something else. Something that didn’t like to hurt people at all. Right, Ball-ee?”

  The little jelly that had saved the wounded mother back in the elven village popped out of Val’s bag.

  “Di-rec-tive!” it squeaked. Ball-ee jumped closer to the tarry ooze, quivering its body as it tried to gesture at the tar-like mass. “Di-rec-tive!”

  “No,” the Pit moaned, its slimy body pulling back even further. “What is it? What is that thing?”

  “Far as I can tell, he’s what you used to be,” I answered as Ball-ee leaped over to me, tugging on my leg with one pseudopod and gesturing at the Horde Pit with the other.

  “Di-rec-tive?”

  “Directive.” I nodded. “Change him back to his original state.”

  “Di-rec-tive!” Ball-ee said with a happy bounce, leaping into the ditch and toward the quivering mass of ooze. “Change! Teach! Heal! Di-rec-tive!”

  “Take,” the terrified slime burped. “It will… take from… me.”

  “Yup,” I replied calmly. “You will lose what you are now, by gaining back what was stolen from you.”

  Seek what is lost, the quiet voice said inside me. So that greater things may come.

  “Get back,” the Pit belched, brandishing a sludgy pseudopod like a whip. But the little jelly just bunched up and began to leak a sweet-smelling blue mist from its body.

  “Di-rec-tive!” Ball-ee chirped again, spraying the mist toward the muck in front of it. The mist struck the brandishing tentacle, and the Pit screamed from a thousand bubbles as the black tentacle splashed apart, turning into clear water droplets. Limp forms fell out of the destroyed tentacle, flopping onto the soft ground inside the trench.

  “Noo…” the ooze wailed. “Lost… prey…now…changing…don’t…wan’t…”

  “You only feel that way because Aegrim made you forget what healing people used to feel like,” I sighed. Ball-ee quivered in agreement.

  “Di-rec-tive! Heal! Fix! Change! Di-rec-tive!”

  “No… right…” the Pit belched in argument, but I shook my head again.

  “You can’t call me a prince and still dictate what I can or can’t do in the next sentence. If others can incarcerate or punish criminals against their will in an attempt to rehabilitate them, then I can purify a giant torture ooze that wants to consume people and create something better out of the process. Keep going, Ball-ee.”

  The little jelly nodded. More of its blue mist spread over the wailing Pi
t ooze, dissolving it into clear droplets of water that quickly evaporated. The dissolution left the people and fairies unharmed, the mist somehow letting them fall gently to the floor, still sleeping fitfully. Merada sucked in a breath at the sight.

  “It’s true,” she said softly. “Ye really can save them.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “But this is the easy part.” I turned to look behind me. “Everyone get out any spare clothing or blankets you have. These people are going to be cold and frightened when they wake up.”

  “On it!” Petal shouted as she flew forward with a tiny blanket. Where she got it from, I had no idea, but at her urging the other fairies were following suit.

  Don’t ask, Breena sent at me. Just accept that it’s magic. She flew high above the pit and began to glow. I’ll help, too.

  More of the Pit began to dissolve as Ball-ee’s mist spread over it, and more bodies fell. Eventually Merada’s people and the Gaelguard ran forward, pulling blankets out of their own packs. Finally the Pit wailed and quivered one more time and splashed downward, dissolving into a million clear droplets.

  That was number five, I noted quietly to myself, as the Dragon of Pain reached through our flesh-bond to rage at me.

  Another masterpiece undone. I will remember this, traitor-prince.

  Through the soul-bond, Vinclum, the Dragon of Honor and Bonds reached out to answer him.

  Had you been wiser, Aegrim, you would have foreseen this end when you forced his ancestors to pass down your bond. Well, done, Malcolm. Invictus knows you by name.

  That was all the time I had to spare for my invisible friends, because the Pit victims were starting to wake up. I climbed into the trench as well, summoning the spare clothing I had packed into my storage space. Merada tilted her head at me in surprise. She had just wrapped a blanket around one of the victims, sighing in relief when she realized the still-sleeping woman was breathing normally. But my pulling bundles of blankets out of nowhere still caught her eyes somehow.

  “Just how much stuff are ye carrying around? And where do ye keep it?”

  “Invisible magic container,” I replied, simplifying more for my own sanity than anything else. “And since it duplicates my own Strength, it can carry as much as I can.”