text: "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 party' to 'omgosh, massive invasion, plague, or weather bomb, we're all gonna die!' Well, not outside of Earth, anyway," Breena hedged. "That's the one place Stell can't keep track of how so many Tumults are forming. Nobody's really sure what to think about that planet. But out here in the Woadlands? Arguably the most sheltered of the sister worlds? Impossible," my fairy friend declared. "Something else must be happening. And I'm afraid if we don't figure out what then we could very well have a third Trial or Tumult suddenly spring out of nowhere. And that's probably game over."
  
  "Alright," I said. "So we head for the elven tribe at the earliest opportunity, get all the information we can, destroy any advanced forces of the two incoming catastrophes on our way. Any further questions?"
  
  "How strong are our enemies?" Val raised her hand and asked. "The ones that we know about, I mean. Since it feels like we have enemies manipulating forces behind the scenes."
  
  "Those shouldn't be much of a mystery," Eadric grunted. "The jackass Earthborn that followed you here have their claws in all kinds of things."
  
  "Probably," I hedged. "But it's better to avoid too many assumptions right now, with all the surprises that keep popping up."
  
  I remembered the very first Horde I had encountered long before everything had gone wrong.
  
  They had been the only ones expecting my arrival. Even Stell had been surprised the first time I showed up on Avalon. But the very first Pit champion had immediately surrendered to me, had been expecting me to lead them to greater conquest and greater acts of depravity. My refusal to do so was the reason I gained the title 'traitor-prince.'
  
  All because someone had told them the Earthborn were coming, and would lead them.
  
  Which just meant I hadn't found all of my enemies, yet.
  
  "Normally," Breena said, answering Breyn's original question, "their strength varies, but they should mirror the Horde in most progression, with large armies of weak, small, disposable troops, followed by normal and elite troops, and then finally their nobility, which can control the weather directly. I'd put their normal nobles to be as strong as Spawn, and their leaders can be close to Dark Icon-level, assuming they aren't led by an actual Dark Icon. But I can't guess that here, because they're already being different from normal by establishing their footholds so fast."
  
  "Explain why that always takes time," I requested. "Is it an issue of growing undetected, like the Horde does, or something else?"
  
  "It's a magical issue," Breena explained. "They can't breed in a new location like the Horde does. They have to bring their armies over from their Court. That always takes time and subterfuge, because if the Woadlands' own Icons notice they'll move to disrupt the process. They have to go undetected for decades before they can even risk creating a Trial, much less a Tumult."
  
  "So they had to have help in both going unnoticed and in getting enough magic to come here faster," Karim pondered. "What about the Chaos Wound? Is that a surprise as well?"
  
  "No, that one was pretty much expected," Breena replied, flying up to float as she talked. "I mean, we didn't know it was going to be an actual Chaos Wound, but we knew there was going to be a Chaos-type Trial happening in the Woadlands this century. It's mostly on schedule, except for being a couple years early. But it couldn't have caused enough distraction for the Hoarfolk to invade unnoticed. That means, once again, we're either dealing with the Malus Members here or whoever helped plant a Horde Pit way back at the beginning."
  
  "Probably both," I decided.
  
  "Again," Alum interjected, "the main problem I see is ensuring the cold does not starve the current tribes of my world." He pointed to a nut-bearing tree nearby. "If there were still a great number of Woadfathers, it might not be a problem, as they will help the fruit-bearing plants recover quickly. But even if we act quickly the tribes may starve, since winter has passed and much of their stores may be gone."
  
  "We have some contingencies for that," I replied. "You saw grain farms on Avalon. Stell has been spreading the plants as often as she can while still going unnoticed, and I brought as much storage as I could fit, too. I also packed a number of basic Woadfather seeds."
  
  "That will help." The Gaelguard nodded. "But I suspect it will not be enough to stop famine spreading across multiple tribes."
  
  "No it won't," I replied. "Which is why we need to move out, unless anyone has any more questions."
  
  They didn't, and since Karim had been able to secure the Pathway with a few cheap veiling and detection glyphs, we took off for the elven village, since every second counted.
  
  I tried not to think about the fact that I was racing against a clock I couldn't even read.