Woad Children (Challenger's Call Book 3)

by Nathan Thompson

  “Wait, what?” I asked, confused. I supposed I’d earned it, though. I’d been throwing a lot of surprises at her.

  “I be a part of Stell, remember?” Merada reminded me. “She can re-link with me, though it cost her. She’s had to do it several times over the years, and it made the difference we needed each time. But she hasn’t done it at all in the last year. It’s had me worrying about her.”

  “I just saw her,” I answered. “She’s safe. I wish she had let you know I was coming.”

  “I haven’t seen her yet,” Merada answered. “But if the time on Avalon has sped up again, then she may be still on her way to meet with us. But as a concession early on, Stell let the Icons have limited authority over me, to preserve their authority over their own world. It has led to some… conflicts,” she finally said.

  “Like them not ever coming to Avalon’s defense,” I answered. Merada nodded reluctantly.

  “Right, then,” I answered, rising to my feet. The party was winding down anyway, as the fire dimmed and people began walking to their homes or tents. “That gives me a good idea on how to take tomorrow’s meeting. I should probably go get some sleep for tomorrow.” I caught a couple of the younger maidens shoot me looks, and I realized that if things went a certain way, I might very well not get any sleep at all. “Merada? Can you show me where I’m sleeping tonight?”

  My voice carried enough for said maidens to gain frustrated, defeated looks and walk away. I was simultaneously relieved and disappointed.

  “Of course, big strong Challenger,” the vibrant woman said with a wink as she hopped up and took my arm. “Right this way, if ye will.”

  We began walking, and I tried to deal with the sensations of being touched again by a beautiful woman. It shouldn’t have been so hard. But then, I shouldn’t have been tortured or disabled either.

  Eventually, I was led into one of the hollowed-out tree houses. Merada opened the door to a small but furnished, comfortable-looking room, and stopped walking.

  “And this’ll be all I’m doin’ with ye tonight as well, sorry to say,” she added. “Just in case ye were hoping things would move faster than they would.”

  She said this in a playful, but firm voice, and I knew that she was being serious about that. Once again, relieved and disappointed at the same time.

  “Thank you for not having any nefarious designs on my precious chastity, fair lady,” I answered.

  “Ye’re welcome,” she said with another wink. “But don’t get too used to it.”

  I wanted to act on that comment. But she walked away before I could finish sputtering. I sighed and headed for my bed.

  #

  “My eye!” I screamed as the searing pain woke me up. “Get it out of my eye!”

  I thrashed, and to my surprise my arms were unbound. Why hadn’t they bound me first? I wondered briefly, before the shock and agony took back their precedence.

  “He’s at it again!” a voice called out. “Give me a hand with him!”

  A hand grasped my arm.

  “Stop!” I shouted shrilly. “No! Please!”

  I hated myself for begging. It never worked and it made me look even weaker.

  But I couldn’t help it. They had caught me by surprise this time. I was expecting this torture to fall on its usual day, instead of tonight.

  “I said I need help!” the voice holding me shouted again, and to my surprise I was able to throw its grip off. My grappler let out a shriek in surprise, then rushed back to try and restrain my arm. “I can’t hold him! Hurry and help me before he gets hurt!”

  “Here!” another voice shouted, and a pair of much stronger arms grabbed my other limb. “Wes! Stop it!”

  “Just get it out of my eye!” I screamed, still jerking around. “What is wrong with you? Why are you even doing this?”

  “Blast it, Wes! Yer eye be fine! Yer whole self be fine!”

  I blinked, and found I could move both eyelids. I finally stopped thrashing and looked around. Wood, not stone surrounded me. I was wearing soft, comfortable clothing instead of prisoner rags, and sleeping in a bed instead of the stone floor. The figure holding my left arm was a tall, attractive Woadfolk woman with brown hair, brown eyes and a Woad tattoo over one of her cheeks. She was looking at me with a concerned, surprised expression. The figure on my right was a short, beautiful, and extremely tired-looking woman with wings and frayed pink hair. She swayed a bit as she stood over me, and there were heavy bags over her eyes.

  I lay there breathing for a few more moments, processing the fact that I wasn’t being tortured again, and that I wasn’t still captured. No one was torturing and killing me over and over again right now. But I was reliving it anyway, and these two people had to deal with it.

  One of them looked like she had been dealing with it all night.

  “Breena?” I asked, guiltily. “Merada?”

  “We’re here,” Breena said sleepily. “It’s okay, Wes. You’re safe. Everyone’s safe.”

  I then remembered the person I had thrown off of me earlier. I also remembered my dragon strength, and how I was strong enough to go toe to toe with Mongrels, Spawn, and Howlers. The thought that I might have hurt Breena in my sleep nearly gave me an immediate breakdown.

  “Breena?” I asked, my voice trembling. “Did I…” I trailed off.

  “It’s okay, Wes,” Breena soothed, still sounding sleepy. “I can fly. I didn’t get hurt.”

  That still didn’t reassure me.

  “I could’ve…” I swallowed, and shook my head.

  “No, Wes, you couldn’t have,” Breena shook her head. “I’ve Risen a lot too, remember? I’m tougher than I look. This was the first time this even happened and it only happened—” she paused to yawn—“because I got careless.”

  I took another breath to get myself under control, and tried not to think about how I might be dangerous to people in my sleep now. What was going to happen if I had to go somewhere overnight? Would I hurt a team member in my sleep?

  “You can probably let go of me, now,” I said to the two women. “I think I’m fine.”

  I wasn’t. But I wasn’t ready to admit that.

  “Yer not fine,” Merada growled, but she let me go as both Satellites backed away from me.

  “Why don’t you go back to sleep, Wes?” Breena said, still sounding extremely tired. It was then that I remembered that I had already woken up several times tonight, and that Breena had been there for every nightmare. I nodded, but before I rolled back over I saw Merada tug Breena to a distant corner of the room and begin whispering furiously with her.

  “This is because of what they did to him, isn’t it,” Merada demanded in a low voice. I didn’t think she knew I heard. “How long has he been like this? Does this happen every night?”

  “It’s not usually this bad,” Breena said in a sheepish, sleepy voice.

  “Oh?” Merada hissed. “So he has only one terror a night then? That all?” Then her tone softened. “Look how tired ye are. Why didn’t ye get me sooner?”

  “I thought I could keep up,” Breena muttered. “I didn’t think it would be this hard without Guineve… and he doesn’t want other people to know.” Another awkward pause. “It embarrasses him.”

  Merada was silent for a moment.

  “Why in the bloody world would he get embarrassed over what someone else did to him? How is that his fault?”

  “I don’t know,” Breena protested. “I think it’s an Earth thing.”

  “Then Earth is stupid,” Merada argued quietly. “They shouldn’t let their folk to be embarrassed over being wronged! He should tell all his allies and friends about this! So that we know what he’s going through, and so we can help him!”

  “I don’t think Earthborn get taught how to do that,” Breena whispered in a small voice.

  I heard Merada sigh angrily.

  “Bloody, awful nonsense. A renowned champion, saved others on several worlds, and his own people let him feel shame over being wrong
ed. Bastard planet. Bastard people to do this to the very best of their own. They don’t deserve him. They never did. Why don’t ye go downstairs and sleep, Breena. I’ll take over yer shift with him.”

  “Um,” my fairy friend hedged. “He gets nervous about being touched at night.” Another pause. “Especially by women. I… I think they did that to him too.”

  Merada swore something my mindscreen wouldn’t translate.

  “Damned Earthborn sods. To do this to him. And on our worlds, no less. I should kill them all.” She caught her breath. “Nevermind. Ye need to be at yer best tomorrow, Bree. Just leave him with me. I promise I’ll take care of him.”

  Breena started to say something, then stopped to yawn. She finally muttered something in agreement and fluttered out of the room, probably to one of the fairy lofts I saw on my way in.

  I heard light footsteps pad their way over to my bed, then stop. I tried to fall back asleep, but I couldn’t. Truth be told, I felt all kinds of jittery right now. I gave up and rolled back over. I saw Merada hovering next to my bed, biting her lip uncertainly, the way I had seen both Stell and Breena do once or twice.

  “I didn’t wake ye, did I?” she asked, her normal confidence absent from her voice. “I can be next room, mayhaps, if…” She trailed off. I shook my head at her.

  “No, it’s fine. You’re not the problem. I’m just having a hard time, tonight. Sorry to keep everyone up.”

  “Don’t be,” she replied softly. “Please.” She stepped closer. “Please just accept our help. And—” she paused for another moment, her proud expression completely gone—“forgive us. Forgive me.”

  “Yeah, about that,” I said, sitting up. This issue needed to be put to rest. “I’m taking your apology at face value, okay? You tried to kill me because you thought I was out to hurt your people. I’m not happy it happened and I feel you could have handled it better, but I understand what you were thinking and part of me suspects that you weren’t completely serious because you didn’t go all out at the start.”

  “Aye.” She nodded. “I was hoping to scare and capture ye more than anything else. I’m sorry.”

  “I forgive you,” I said firmly, and I meant it. “And Merada, I have to, okay? I can’t just ask you to trust me and then turn around and hold that issue over your head forever. Not when I need your spear and bow.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I’m not apologizing for that, right now. I’m apologizing for resenting ye.”

  I cocked my head at her.

  “Ye’ve been gone for fifty years,” she said, and her words started to spill out a little faster. “Before the other Earthborn came, Stell had told me to expect ye. Ye were going to be here for me first Trial, and I was to get yer help early. Get to do something really special for this world.”

  I nodded. Conquering a Trial or Tumult didn’t just prevent a disaster from happening, it also reversed the world’s fate into something better. Prevention of disease, better longevity, the discovery of new resources, the list went on. But the world and the people always benefited greatly.

  “Instead,” she continued. “Disaster struck… and ye never came. And it angered me,” she said, eyes looking downward. “I didn’t mean to,” she said quickly. “I knew it wasn’t yer fault. I knew ye had to be in dire straits yerself. After a while I believed ye were dead, even, and just transferred my anger to the other Earthborn responsible for that mess. But throughout it all, I still hated that I was the one that never got her Challenger. I was the one who had to try and save her world on her own. To battle Dark Icons, even though I couldn’t yet. To work with the good Icons, even though they didn’t trust me. I felt abandoned by ye, and I blamed ye for it. I’m sorry.”

  “I get it,” I answered. Because I did. “Feelings don’t always make sense. And they don’t always do what you tell them to, either.”

  Sorry not sorry, Teeth spoke up. I ignored him again.

  “I don’t want ye to get it,” Merada said back, raising her voice. “I want ye to be mad, too! I’ve been thinking I had things hard, but then I come in here and see ye remembering the loss of yer eyes! And everyone says that’s not the only thing they did to ye! They killed ye hundreds of times! And as soon as ye come here, we act like yer ungrateful Earthborn back home and mistrust ye! It ain’t right, and I don’t want ye to think it is!” She finished speaking, and blew air out of her mouth. “Damnation. I wanted to apologize and now I’m yelling at ye again. And then yer gonna forgive me again, and the whole thing’s gonna start over…”

  “No it won’t,” I said with a grin. “Let’s try this: shut up.”

  She glared at me in shock, clenched her fist, glared harder when I kept grinning, and then she sighed, threw back her head, and started to laugh, a rich musical sound that somehow ranged perfectly between at least three notes.

  Damn it, Teeth thought at me. I’m wrong.

  Yeah, usually, I thought back as I watched the beautiful huntress chuckle.

  No, FNG insisted. Really. Her best feature isn’t her legs. It’s her laugh.

  That was probably the least hormonal thing he had said all day. I didn’t know whether to congratulate him or figuratively smack his face anyway. I settled for watching Merada laugh, until I was able to laugh with her. Finally, she dropped down to a throaty, mellow chuckle, and then she wiped tears out of her eyes.

  “Damn ye,” she swore, still grinning. “That shouldn’t have worked.”

  “Blame it on the late hour,” I said, still keeping my grin.

  “Speaking of which,” she said sternly. “Go back to sleep. Ye’ve a big day tomorrow.”

  “I wish I could,” I answered. “But the truth is I’m still too wound up. But if you can help me with something…”

  “Nice try,” she said dryly. “But ye haven’t even bought me dinner, yet.”

  Zing!

  Shut up, New Guy.

  “Actually there’s a project I needed to work on that should exhaust me mentally. I feel like you know at least enough magic to keep from blowing myself up.”

  “A bit,” Merada admitted. “But not nearly as much as Breena.”

  “Breena can’t know,” I answered. “She’ll stop me if she finds out.”

  “That be a bad sign,” the brunette noted.

  “Just hear me out. If you think I’ll blow myself up, I’ll stop.” Probably, I didn’t say out loud, as I removed the wooden stick I had taken from the Chaos Wound. Merada’s eyes widened at the sight. “Here’s what I want to do…”

  #

  Surprisingly, Breena’s present didn’t take very long. Merada explained in detail what fairy wands were supposed to do, which was to just enhance, channel, and direct magic that was already cast. Which was the only thing I had been using script magic for so far. The best way I could explain the concept was to compare normal fairy spells to thrown rocks, and their wands to slingshots. And the Chaos-enhanced branch I had seemed like the perfect material to work this on. And if I screwed up, we were going to run into more Chaos Wound infestations, where I would probably find more magic wood.

  But it didn’t even come to that. After a few practice runs with a piece I could afford to break off, my first real attempt worked like a charm. Part of the reason for it was that I kept the spells simple, similar to what I used script magic to do before. I didn’t enable it to store spare spells, or let Breena cast ones she couldn’t already cast. I just scribed and sang, and shaped inscriptions into the stick to let her do more of what she already did. Merada helped where she could, and it turned out she knew a little bit of all three magics herself, or at least enough to keep me from doing something horribly stupid.

  In the end, I did the simplest spells I could from all three schools, set plenty of boundaries to keep them from being misused (because breaking the rules was my job, not Breena’s), and then poured as much raw mana into the creation as Merada would let me.

  It turned out that raw mana is an excellent crutch for novices.

  It
also turned out that by wizardry standards, I had a lot of raw mana. Enough to where Merada was visibly impressed, which did wonders for my insecurities. And best of all, depleting my mental energy really helped me get some sleep afterwards. Just before I went to sleep, a notification from my mindscreen popped up.

  The Challenger has successfully crafted a magic item. The Challenger has gained a point of Intelligence and Wisdom from exercising his mind in new ways. The Challenger has gained a rank in Script Magic, Song Magic, and Shaping Magic.

  The Challenger has taken another step down the Path of the Archmage. Magic-related skills will be easier to understand.

  The Challenger has gained his first rank of the skill Magical Crafting.

  The next thing I remembered, a tiny pink light had rushed into my room and began opening every boarded window she could find.

  “Rise and,” she began cheerfully, then yawned loudly. “Rise and shine! Big day peoples… hi Merada,” Breena suddenly said in a neutral voice. “How was your night with Wes?”

  “Hmm?” a sleepy voice said next to me. “Wes? Who?”

  I became dimly aware of a lean, pleasant shape next to me.

  “Oh, you know him,” Breena replied casually. “Tall, red hair, can get really broody or really goofy in the same minute, frustratingly handsome, currently the person your right arm is draped over.”

  There was an arm draped over my chest, I realized. I tried to remember how it got there.

  She fell asleep after watching you play with your magic wand, Dragon-Me provided unhelpfully. Said it was too boring and over too soon.

  I muttered an angry reply at him and tried not to lose my grip, crushing down on the irritating impulse that made me freak out whenever a beautiful woman touched me. Except for a slight twitch that I hoped no one saw, I was successful. Besides, I told myself as I started to open my eyes. It’s not like we did any intimate activities last night.

  “Oh,” the woad-marked woman muttered blearily. “That Wes. Right.” I saw her shape turn as I tried to blink the fuzziness out of my vision. “Give me a moment. By the way, Wes, where did ye put me leggings? I can’t find where ye threw them at.”