Woad Children by Nathan Thompson

Author:Nathan Thompson [Thompson, Nathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-03-26T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: TRESSPASSERS

“So they are the ones bringing the cold,” Alum asked calmly, when Breena finished describing the Hoarfolk.

“Correct,” my fairy friend nodded. She had shrunk to be small enough to fit on my shoulder, apparently choosing to sit. “They will also use it as a weapon. To what degree depends on the power and nobility of the perspective Hoarfolk, but expect your largest battles to happen with them inside a blizzard.”

“That’s bad,” one of the other Gaelguard grunted. “The frost will kill any recent harvest the people have, as well as most of the animals they hunt. We may very well wind up fighting off an invasion only to watch them suffer through a famine immediately afterwards.”

“And the cold will linger if you do drive them off,” Breena added. “If enough of the Hoarfolk nobles get a foothold here, they’ll begin to alter the weather permanently. They’ll begin to siege the world with indefinite cold storms.” She pointed again to the white cloud wall above the far-off tree line. It was much easier to notice now that we were on an elevated spot. I could see bolts of ice-blue lightning flicker from time to time in the screen of fog. The storm was likely weeks and weeks of hard travel away—assuming it didn’t move closer—but the power of it still made my neck hair rise.

“Alright. So we need to find a way to deal with both this threat and the Chaos Wound, and quickly. How do we keep the storms from destroying the Woadlands, Breena?”

“Their nobles generate the cold on their own, but the strongholds they bring make it permanent. We will have to undo the binding their palaces have formed with this land. She looked again at the monstrous weather phenomenon. “In theory, solving both disasters is simple: we just need to destroy their sources, and that’s something we should be able to do now. But there shouldn’t be a Tumult happening at all right now.” Breena shook her head. “They don’t just come out of nowhere. Stell has been spotting their warning signs for ages, and she hasn’t missed a single warning sign in centuries. I don’t understand how the Hoarfolk managed to swing an invasion so fast.”

“Well, Avalon’s fallen about fifty years behind its sister worlds,” I pointed out. “So plenty of things could have changed since we were last invaded.”

The three Testifiers nodded at that. I had probably spent close to six months being murdered over and over, before I became powerful enough to escape. But from what Rhodes’ people told me, our inability to stop Cavus and the Malus Members from conquering Avalon resulted in a failed Tumult, one that caused Avalon to somehow lose half a year for every death I died. But Breena shook her head at that.

“The Hoarfolk might—key word, might—have been able to create a strong Challenge or a weak Trial in that time period. But fifty years isn’t long enough to go from ‘all is well, let’s have a

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