Woad Children (Challenger's Call Book 3) Read online

  I smiled back, feeling a little self-conscious, and then realized I had given her a chance to examine Teeth’s feelings about her.

  Hey, he suddenly said.

  What did you show her—

  Take care of her, he cut me off. I mean it. Treat her right.

  I stumbled at that, and Breena giggled again.

  “Sorry,” she said. “But he talked again, didn’t he? It’s kind of cute watching you two figure each other out.”

  I sighed. Thankfully, though, Teeth was done talking.

  We arrived back at the Shelter, and I had to reflect how it had changed.

  Before the Dark Icon Raw-Maw’s attack, the shelter had simply been one massive dome, reaching up to the heavens and across the horizon. A handful of tiny basement doors had been the only entry. But when Raw-Maw had shattered his way inside, the magic broke somehow. It wasn’t much, at first. Just some stones becoming loose and falling from the walls every now and then. Then I saw some dust fall from the ceiling in the basement, and rejected the proposal that people should live down below, or even go inside. Which was inconvenient, because the underground tunnels had an inexplicably efficient transportation matrix down below.

  Then, when Guineve handed me the magic scabbard for my special sword handle, which may or may not have been the hilt to Excalibur, the whole thing collapsed. The entire, infinitely tall and wide sheet of solid rock, each stone weighing probably a ton, just melted into the ground.

  It should have caused a colossal earthquake. Should have probably created its own fault line and reconfigured the landscape. At the very least, it should have made more than a quiet series of thuds.

  But that’s what happened. The stones just struck the grass below and crumbled into dust upon impact. Avalon informed me—after I had finished screaming—that it had absorbed the first layer of defense per ancient protocol, now that the Lord of Avalon had regained sufficient Right to Rule. This would eventually free up a considerable amount of power for other rituals, even though it would take Avalon time to redistribute all the energy.

  I still protested. The giant wall had proven to be a phenomenal defense against both the Raw-Mawed Wolf and his army of Hordebeasts. Even if those were the last invaders, that still didn’t check the fact that there were a number of ancient evils, the chief of which possibly being an Umbra of Cavus’ caliber, still below us held back by nothing but a seal that, for all I knew, was dangerously close to its expiration date. I really, really wanted my giant magic rock wall back, so that I could use the traps on it to blow something else up if we needed to.

  But Avalon insisted that it was unable to comply. Now that a Lord of Avalon was back, it said, it was my job to defend against Tumult-class monsters. If I wanted that massive rock wall back, I would just have to recreate the magic ritual that summoned it. One that Avalon inexplicably no longer had in its logs, despite its recent repairs.

  In the end I gave up screaming about it and just focused on the fact that I’d soon have more power for my other ideas.

  Weirdly enough, though, the underground tunnels somehow survived with no damage whatsoever. They even became more stable. They also led to a new area, one above ground. It was a massive clearing in the middle of a group of sheer cliffs I had never seen before. The ground gently sloped upward into large fields of grass, dotted here and there with small crude huts made of thatch, mud, and straw. There was enough for all of the refugees and newly resurrected Avalonians to move into, and they had done so immediately. I was worried about the condition the huts were in, but the people all assured me that these buildings were still preferable to the ruins outside, as they had roofs. They also pointed out that this spot had the best weather so far, and after a couple of days I had to agree. There was just a very light level of mist and almost no cloud cover, which meant I could actually see Avalon’s white sun here. If I didn’t know better, I would have assumed I had just walked into a painting depicting an idealistic vision of an old peasant village.

  Beyond that, there was a large building that was actually made of wood and stone. It had high walls, with windows only on the second floor and above, and looked just big enough to let me squeeze my entire community into it if I had to. There was a large front opening consisting of two doors that was wide enough to admit a fair number of people at once, but still narrow enough to barricade from the other side if one had to. The feudal defensive nature of the structure baffled me. It still wasn’t anything close to the defensive value the old tunnel wall provided, and I couldn’t understand why I would bother to have defenses at all this deep into my world. Anything that had gotten this far into Avalon wasn’t going to be turned back by a Dark Age manor knock-off. Breena and Guineve were just as baffled by the structure as I was, and the resurrected Avalonians just said it was my lordly seat. They didn’t know, or wouldn’t say, why I had a lordly seat, but they all confirmed that it was the sort of thing they knew a Lord of Avalon would have.

  I had been frustrated and angry about the whole business right up until I realized that the manor had come with the most comfortable bed I had ever slept on, home back on Earth included. One well-rested night later, I decided to write the whole problem off as Avalon giving me its own version of ‘bling’—specifically real estate.

  The structure seemed to have three main rooms of note: a hall for dining and meeting, a room with a chair I could apparently sit in and hold court, and a place for me to sleep. Right now I was in the hall, getting a report from Breena concerning the overall status of Avalon.

  “Okay,” Breena sighed, then took a deep breath. “First of all, Guineve can confirm that we’re not lagging behind any of the other worlds time-wise anymore. We’re gaining a week at least, maybe even a month, for every day that passes on all the other worlds, not just Earth. I know you already figured that, what with the ambush and everything today, but we wanted to confirm that sort of advantage isn’t going anywhere. For now, at least.”

  “Fantastic,” I replied genuinely. The one thing I had been lacking the most in trying to stop at least six apocalypses was time. It was nice to know my breathing room wasn’t going anywhere, even if I still had to make full use of it.

  “Second, all of those people we somehow managed to bring back to life, which is… kind of a new one, even for you?” she asked herself, sighed again, then kept talking. “They’re integrating pretty well. Most of the people we rescued from the Horde Pit turned out to be the fathers, husbands, and brothers of the other prisoners, so they’re fitting right in, with an extra dose of happy shouts.”

  I smiled at that. After all of the madness and pain everyone had been through, it was good to recover something thought to be lost for good.

  All is not lost, the quiet voice said suddenly in my mind, before vanishing again.

  I blinked away the distraction and turned my attention back to my bonded companion.

  “Okay, that’s more good news. How are people dealing with the resurrected Avalonians?”

  “Best is answer is ‘they don’t know themselves,’” Breena replied. “They’ve accepted them for now, but no one really knows what to make of having another member from an extinct race show up on your doorstep every week or so. By the way, we’re still gaining about one of them a week and I have no idea how long that will last. But everyone’s just taking that fact in stride for now.”

  “As long as everyone’s getting along, I’ll take it,” I answered. “Are they bringing anything new with them?”

  “Not yet.” The tiny sprite shook her head. “Most of their memories are still gone. Guineve and I are working with a couple when we have time to see what we can bring back. Best guess is that they’ll gradually make a full or mostly full recovery as long as they get enough time. But no, no one has any lost tech or magical secrets to share with us yet. But the phasing trick they can all do is still really neat.”

  “Okay.” I nodded. “Do we still have enough food to handle the new people?”

  “Yeah.” Breena no
dded back. “And a lot of the people we rescued had experience in farming and cooking. Furthermore, now that the whole planet’s secure, we have no problem getting any plants we want. Especially with the new seeds you created. Those are working out great.”

  “Good,” I said, although we wouldn’t get the full use of the seeds Avalon created until we started visiting other worlds. Right now the five different types of super-grain were kind of redundant. I should probably work on beans or protein plants next if I get a chance, I thought. But for now, that took care of all the immediate concerns.

  “So what you’re telling me is that everyone’s still safe, getting fed and clothed, and that we’re not in any immediate danger time-wise?”

  “I forgot to talk about clothes, but yep, everyone’s all good.” My little friend nodded. “We have food, clothing, and time. Which is why Guineve is making me put up with all of the other stuff you wanna do.” Her head and shoulders sagged, and she gave me her saddest puppy-dog look yet.

  She looked like she was expecting me to figure out exactly why she was sad. I waited all of a half-second before answering, which was apparently too long, because she got frustrated.

  “She’s withholding cookies!” Breena suddenly shouted. “And non-cookies too! Even the stuff I won in the bets with Stell!”

  So that was why her attention span had been so great these days.

  “Well, we had better get to it, then, so that you can get your hopes and dreams back,” I said while trying to keep the irony out of my voice. Somehow it worked, because the little fairy brightened immediately.

  “I knew you’d get it, Wes!” she said while clapping her hands. “You’re my favorite for a reason! Again! Anyway,” she continued, ignoring my confusion over the ‘again’ part of her compliment. “Master-plan number one: portals. Actually, I shouldn’t make a list because that’s the only one we should focus on right now. Here’s why,” she added hurriedly. “The bad news is we can’t use our old portal network because that’s tied to Stell’s main body, probably because she’s still using it to jump around the different planets and coordinate with her other Satellites and provide disaster relief. We should probably leave it alone completely, because it will just endanger her if we tinker with the network at all.”

  “Alright,” I said, taking it in stride. “We still need a way to get to the other worlds though.”

  “Yeah, totally.” The little fairy nodded. “So Guineve and I were thinking we could try the old Pathways.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been wondering about those,” I said as I leaned forward in my seat. “Those are how the Horde and that Dark Icon came here, right?”

  “Right,” the fairy said with a slow bob of her pink-haired head. “They fell out of use a long time ago. Back when Stell had the portal system up and running and there was no one who was allowed to visit Avalon anyway. And Guineve helped make sure no monsters came from them to attack us. Most of them have sort of collapsed, though, and it’s weird that the Horde knew a way here at all.”

  “It’s also weird that you weren’t attacked sooner,” I answered. “Raw-Maw’s team nearly thrashed us, even with Guineve backing us up.”

  “I seem to remember it just being Raw-Maw, a nascent Dark Icon, that was the real source of the trouble. And that Guineve was still very injured at the time. And most specifically, I remember you turning red into purple again and killing a monster that was just beginning to grasp immortality itself. Instead of dying horribly on its claws and fangs, like you should have.”

  “Wasn’t that why I was able to kill it, though?” I countered. “Because it wasn’t immortal yet?”

  Breena sighed.

  “You’re being dense on purpose, Wes. It isn’t cool anymore. You know perfectly well no one was expecting you to battle Dark Icons yet. Let alone beat them in single combat.”

  “I thought I had help from all of you for that?” I replied. “For starters, Guineve fought him too. And all of you enhanced me in a way that I could tell cost each of you.”

  “It did.” Breena nodded again. She flew down to sit on the table, growing to the size of a small child. That was different too, and no one was explaining why she was able to get so big. “The power released from killing the monster more than made up for it, but even with Guineve helping, a believable win should still be about ten Rises away. And that’s just because the Raw-Mawed Wolf hadn’t finished becoming a Dark Icon yet. A full-fledged Dark Icon should still be at least twenty Rises away for you, even with a retinue of like-minded heroes and myself. A strong Dark Icon, that can draw power from a Pantheon, should be about forty Rises away. At least.”

  I shrugged.

  “Don’t know what to tell you. My odds feel pretty unfair, all things considered. I’m pretty happy I’ve been able to stand up to them so far.”

  “So are we,” Breena said quickly. “It’s just causing us to constantly re-examine everything we thought we knew. Like how you were able to kill an incomplete Dark Icon.”

  Cough, cough, I helped, cough, Teeth said in my mind.

  I ignored him.

  “Yeah, I think the Flesh and Soul Bonds played a large role in it. In fact, a lot of things have come easier to me since then. And I can tell that I’m gaining even more power than I used to when I Rise now.”

  Really? the new guy asked. You’re really not going to give me any credit here? That whole fight was in my form!

  Sorry, I replied. I can’t hear you over the sound of your own self-importance.

  “You do know we can tell when you’re having an internal conversation, right, Wes?” Breena asked. “Guineve and I figured it out. You make this weird face, like you’re mad at someone, but your eyes won’t roll back far enough for you to glare at them.”

  “Sorry about that,” I replied. “The new guy’s kind of needy.”

  Asshole.

  You’re welcome.

  “Aaanyway,” Breena interjected awkwardly. “The fact remains that you have possibly more hidden tricks and powers than all of the previous Challengers combined. We’d like to have more control of the process of awakening those, and I’d actually like to talk about that, after we wrap up our discussion on the Pathways.”

  “Yeah, those,” I said, getting back on track. “Can we use any of them?”

  “Well, no,” Breena admitted.

  I glared at her.

  “That’s not a good way to close a subject, Breena. Why can’t we use any of the Pathways?”

  “In the first place,” Breena began, “because most of them have been destroyed. That actually happened even before Stell arrived here. There were only a handful open, and they didn’t seem to get a lot of traffic to begin with. After a couple millennia of nothing but monsters arriving from them for Guineve to kill, Stell went ahead and used her power as Steward to shut them down permanently. It took Guineve being out of commission for one of them to open back up, and we suspect that’s the result of a whole Pantheon of Dark Icons. One that seems really motivated to come here and hunt you, specifically.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “That.”

  Kill the traitor-prince.

  That’s been the chant of almost every Hordebeast I encountered. That concept, that hate, had been the source of power for the Raw-Mawed Wolf to become a Dark Icon candidate.

  “That Pathway is still technically usable, although Guineve has locked it down to prevent further invasions. But I don’t think we can use it for two main reasons: one, it’s got to be firmly under enemy control if they can bring a Dark Icon through it, and two, I don’t think it leads to any of the current worlds.”

  “What do you mean any of the current—oh,” I stopped myself, realizing at the last second.

  “The Lost Deeps,” Breena said with another sad nod.

  The one world Stell had lost before I came.

  And she had lost it to the Horde’s first appearance.

  Which meant the home base of the Horde that hated me, as well as that spectral figure that threatened me
in the end, was most likely the same location.

  I recalled the spectral dragon’s commitment to keep throwing demigods at me, and decided I wasn’t ready to take on that turf yet anyway.

  “Fine,” I admitted. “We can leave that Pathway sealed for now. But if Stell and Guineve had been closing the other Pathways, then it stands to reason we can open them again.”

  “Yeah, reason lied,” Breena admitted. “Turns out those suckers are much easier to shut down than get back up.”

  I sighed and ran my hand through my hair.

  “Breena, we have to figure out a way to the other worlds. Or we’ll lose them.”

  “I know!” the fairy said as she smacked the table she was sitting on. “And ow. That’s not normal wood. But we think we have a solution.” She shook her tiny hand, then continued talking. “A lot of Avalon’s old functions are reawakening. We think either you might be able to do it now, or you should be able to do so soon.”

  Avalon, after inexplicably deciding I was the only candidate for lordship of its planet, assigned me a level of authority dependent on the amount of ‘Right to Rule’ I gained over time. As far as we had been able to determine, I gained Right to Rule whenever I got stronger, completed certain tasks, gained or improved certain items like the weird hilt and sheath, and whenever I did basic leader stuff with the refugees.

  “Okay,” I said. “This is just a guess, but something tells me Avalon is going to decide that I don’t have enough authority to unlock the Pathways yet.”

  “Really?” Breena asked as she tilted her head. “Why?”

  “Call it constructive pessimism,” I answered. “I’ll check anyway, but I’m pretty sure Avalon would have told me by now if I could open the Pathways on my own now.”

  “Affirmative,” the familiar voice suddenly spoke through the floor. “Confirming that Challenger-Lord Wes Malcolm lacks sufficient Right to Rule to project authority to Avalon’s daughter-worlds.”

  “See?” I answered. “It’s probably going to make me get stronger, then undergo another Trial deep inside the passages. Like I did when I cleared out that first group of tunnels down below.”