The rhythm of the road was a new kind of discipline. Dawn meant breaking camp, the air thick with the smell of oat porridge and dung fires. Dusk meant forming the wagons into a defensive circle, a ritual of unhitching, chocking wheels, and posting sentries. The world shrank to the length of the caravan and the two strips of dirt ahead and behind.
I rode beside Jorn on the driver's bench of the supply wagon. He was a man of few words, but those words were often profound in their practicality.
"See that bend ahead?" he'd grunt on the third day. "Ground's softer on the left. Wheel'll sink. Tell the lead driver."
I'd scramble down, run ahead, and relay the message, earning a nod from the grizzled caravan master. It was my first lesson: knowledge of the land was more valuable than strength.
My primary duty began on the fourth day, as the lush, healthy forests of the Holy Empire's heartland began to thin. The leaves grew paler, veined with unhealthy yellow. The air took on a sweet, cloying scent that coated the back of the throat.
"The Blightwood's breath," Jorn muttered, tightening his scarf over his nose. "Right on schedule."
Captain Elara rode down the line. "White! Salve and tonic distribution. Now."
I hopped down and moved from wagon to wagon, guard to guard, driver to driver. I handed out small pots of Blight-Bane Salve. "Rub a pea-sized amount inside your nostrils and on the rim of your mask. Reapply every four hours." Then I poured measures of the bitter Forest-Ward Tonic into their canteens. "A mouthful now, another at midday."
There was skepticism at first. Then we entered the Blightwood proper.
It was a forest of ghosts. The trees stood skeletal, their bark sloughing off in grey patches. The ground was a carpet of rotting leaves and strange, bulbous fungi that pulsed with a sickly internal light. The air grew thick with floating motes—spores that glimmered like poisonous glitter.
Within an hour, a guard who'd "forgotten" to apply the salve started coughing violently, greenish mucus flecking his lips. I forced salve on him and dosed him with tonic. The coughing fit subsided to a rough hack within minutes. After that, compliance was absolute.
My value to the caravan became tangible. I was no longer just the odd kid; I was the reason their lungs weren't filling with fungal rot.
On the second night in the Blightwood, the first real attack came.
Not from bandits, but from the wood itself.
We were circled, sentries posted. The usual night sounds—the chirp of insects, the call of night birds—were absent. Only the soft, dreadful plop of overripe fungi bursting.
Then, the vines moved.
Not my Sun-Cap Vines, but native Strangler's Kiss—semi-sentient creepers that normally grew slowly over decades. Here, bloated on decay, they were aggressive. They dropped from the canopy like green serpents, seeking warmth, seeking life to drain.
A shout went up. "Vines! At the perimeter!"
Guards slashed with swords, but for every vine severed, two more seemed to take its place. The vines were tough, fibrous, and their touch left numbing, itchy welts.
Elara's voice cut through the chaos. "White! Can you do anything about this?"
This was different from the Blightvine. This was a forest of individual predators, not a single networked infestation. I couldn't conquer it. But I could repel it.
I ran to the centre of the circle, near the campfire. I focused, not on creating life, but on projecting a concept. I recalled the principle of "Boundary" from the Lore Tree and combined it with the sheer, aggressive vitality of my Dragon's Kiss pepper. I didn't try to control the Strangler's Kiss. I made the idea of us toxic to them.
I poured my mana into the earth at my feet, visualizing not a plant, but a pulse of defiant, fiery life. A wave of invisible energy rippled out from me, carrying the essence of burning spice and unyielding growth.
The effect was immediate. The vines recoiled as if scalded. They writhed back, away from the wagon circle, seeking less "painful" prey. They didn't die, but they no longer saw us as easy food.
The attack ceased. The forest fell silent again, save for the heavy breathing of the guards.
Elara stared at me, her expression unreadable in the firelight. "What was that?"
"An area-of-effect deterrent," I said, the term from my old life slipping out. "I made our camp taste... wrong to them."
She nodded slowly. "Useful. How long will it last?"
"A few hours. The effect is passive now, woven into the immediate soil and air. It'll fade by dawn."
"Then we double the watches and hope dawn comes fast." She turned away, but I heard her mutter to her lieutenant, "Mara wasn't kidding. He doesn't just talk to plants. He negotiates with the whole damned forest."
My status within the caravan shifted again. From useful herbalist to a potential tactical asset. The looks I got held less curiosity and more wariness. I had a power they didn't understand, and that made me both valuable and strange.
The rest of the Blightwood passed without major incident. My deterrent held. We lost no animals, and only one guard required treatment for a vine welt that had gotten him before my pulse went out.
As we left the last of the sickly trees behind, emerging into rocky, windswept foothills, the mood lifted. But Elara called me to her that evening, away from the fire.
"The Blightwood was a test," she said bluntly. "One you passed. But the real danger isn't trees. It's men. We're entering the Borderlands proper. Gorek the Rotting's territory starts around the next ridge. His scouts will have seen our dust cloud for days."
I kept my face carefully neutral. "I thought he was a bandit. Won't he avoid a guarded caravan?"
"He's a bandit who uses fear as a weapon," she said, her eyes scanning the dark horizon. "He might hit us just to prove he can, to steal a wagon, to capture people for ransom... or for worse things. His magic is death, boy. Rot and decay. Your salves might help with spores, but they won't stop a blade cursed to fester. Stay in your wagon. If we're attacked, you hide. Your job is to survive to treat the wounded. Understood?"
"Understood, Captain."
But as I walked back to my wagon, my mind raced. Gorek was near. The caravan was a target. The timeline was accelerating faster than the novel suggested. Kaelen's personal vendetta might be pushing the schedule.
I found Jorn sharpening a hand-axe by the wagon wheel. "Jorn. This Gorek. Have the Ironwood caravans fought him before?"
The dwarf spat. "Aye. Lost a full wagon and six good folk to him two runs back. Nasty business. His men don't just kill ye. They... spoil ye. Meat goes bad, armour rusts, wounds turn green in minutes. He's got a lair in the old Dwarven digs up in the Fungus Warrens. Nasty place. Full of things that grow in the dark without the good earth's blessing." He gave me a sidelong look. "Ye're askin' a lot of questions for a herbalist."
"I like to know what I'm up against," I said.
"Heh. Smart. Well, yer up against a man who thinks he's a force of nature. Only thing that beats a force of nature..." he tapped his axe head, "...is a sharper axe, or a bigger force."
I lay in my bedroll that night, staring at the canvas roof of the wagon. The caravan was a shield, but it was also bait. Gorek was coming. The battle I needed to shadow was imminent.
My hand drifted to the Duskwood pack, feeling the outline of Hob's map. The ventilation shaft. The back door.
The heist was no longer a future plan. It was a tactical operation commencing within days.
I had to be ready to disappear into the chaos, to become a shadow, and to steal a flower from a rotting giant's grave.