During the trip back to the village, Cassie focused on the details of what happened during the war, the battles and the magical weapons that they had improvised for the purpose.
It was an effective distraction technique, and the team that came from the Morgana Coven was so enthralled in the stories that they didn't even notice that they had learned virtually nothing about the actual village they were going to see or the people living in it.
So, when they disembarked from the boat to walk the last few hundred metres to the entry, the group had very little idea what was going on or why there was such an impenetrable wall of trees on their left.
"Welcome everyone to Forest Grove, formerly known as the Den," Cassie announced, then stepped aside to let everyone take in the splendour of the village with its elevated walkways and the grand spire in the centre.
"This is magnificent. We had thought you would be hiding underground somewhere so that the Mundane Army couldn't find you. I never expected you to be living somewhere like this." One of the witches gasped.
"Oh, believe me, we spend our fair share of time underground. There is more down there than up here, and equally impressive. You should see the gardens that we have developed down in the caves.
With the blessing of some friendly Treants, the plants grow better than even a Second Rank witch could hope for, and we recently received a large batch of seeds, so the number of varieties has skyrocketed." Wolfe explained.
"The guest houses are up on the upper level, over there on the East side, if you would like to freshen up before lunch, and then we can get to the reason that the Coven sent you all here," Cassie suggested.
Wolfe let the witches lead the majority of the team away while he took the four Noxus Elders aside for a short conversation.
"So, how is the Patriarch doing? I can't imagine that this is how he saw everything turning out when I made a break for it last fall." Wolfe chuckled.
The oldest of the four clapped Wolfe on the shoulder and laughed. "Honestly, that day was the beginning of the end for all things normal in the Coven. The rumours of Mister Wolfe, the mighty bike courier that made the Coven chase him across half the city and even send out a Senior Professor to paralyze him, spread through the city like wildfire.
Then, just as they were getting the bad publicity from that sorted out, they initiated the draft. Only when we went to the Coven Leader to complain about ineligible members being rounded up she played like she had no idea what we were talking about and brought out a list of draftees that had nothing to do with who was actually taken.
We started working with her to sort out that mess, only to find out that nearly everyone on the front lines was either dead or deserted, and things got messy. We gathered the families for a discussion on what to do, and that same night, Council Witches started turning up dead.
Just a couple at first, and it looked like that might be it, and the Coven Leader would appoint replacements, then the ones who were good candidates and their families started coming up dead as well.
By the time the Elder who had been sent to the front lines made it back to the secret tunnels into the city to pass the news that you were alive along with your team, the Nobles weren't leaving home unless they had an armed escort, and the whole city was on full lockdown.
That was when the oldest daughter of the Council Leader tried to have her killed off in public, and old lady Morgana came to the Families for backup to keep the city in order while she cleaned house.
As you know, we agreed, and we won, but the whole Coven is a mess.
Most of the older generation of the Coven Families are dead, and the ones who lived should probably have been killed as well. Council Leader Reiko barely has control over the city because she's too softhearted to get rid of the troublemakers and collapse the Noble Oligarchy.
So, she's slowly getting rid of the corruption, but those loyal to her sister, the ones who think that all the humans should be expelled from the city so that the Witches have an exclusive claim to so-called safety in the Fortress City, keep attacking infrastructure.
They've been burning farms, and we're running low on food. One Rank Two Witch isn't enough to keep a whole city fed, no matter how many powerful Garden Charms she passes out.
So, she wants us to obtain a barrier that will keep intruders out of the farmlands and some weapons like the ones you gave to the mutants to deal with the Mundane Army.
ραΠdαsΝοvεl ƈοm If we have that, we can stabilize things again, and we will move Family Goons into the farm villages as security so that we can drive the corrupt cronies of the Noble Families and the traitors still hiding in the army out of the food production areas entirely."
Wolfe frowned as the news went from bad to worse, to comically horrendous.
"Tell me that you at least got a chance to heal some of the witches in the camps of the Nerve Gas damage." He pleaded, looking for some good news.
"I wish we could say yes, but most of us can't do it. We tried. The awakening is relatively easy, but the nerve gas takes more skill and power than we have. So, not many of them have been healed, and we have had to stick to the ones who still had some aura left so that we could pretend they recovered naturally.
Plus, we don't know which ones are traitors, which means we can't just heal everyone we get a chance to. We have to research them first to see if they'll use that power to try to destabilize the city again." The Elder explained.
"So, in short, Reiko is running out of allies, food, and everything else, and the whole city is a shit show?" Wolfe asked.
"Yeah, that pretty much covers it. So, what are the chances you can make an array large enough to cover the farms around the city?" The Elder asked with a rueful smile.
"I think I can come up with something, but the amount of mana it will take might upset a couple of the witches once they learn about it."
The Elder cracked his knuckles and smiled. "I don't think that it needs to actually withstand a sustained assault. It just has to keep casual trespassers and those idiots who have been skimming off the top out of the area. If it turns into a battle, that's what the guns are for."
"I get where you're going with this. By the time the rest of the Council realizes how much things have changed, Reiko will have everything under control, and the corruption will be mostly cleared out of the food supply system. Or at least shifted to groups who will keep the floors fed." Wolfe agreed. It wasn't perfect, but the city needed food.
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