189 189 They've Gone Crazy
Since Wolfe’s group clearly didn’t know anything about the renegade witches that plagued the wilderness or where they went, the Coven Witches turned their attention to the human prisoners that they had taken.
There weren’t many of them left compared to the size of the unit at the beginning of the day, but there were still nearly fifty soldiers in the green and gray uniforms of the mundane army here waiting to be transferred.
The witches were quick about their work and got them lined up to be loaded into the back of one of their own transport trucks in just a few minutes.
The few witches who still had horses in this unit moved to surround the vehicle while the unit commander turned to Priya with a polite salute.
“I will see you soon, cousin. The reports say that your allied units have been active all along the line today, so we might get to return to base by spring.” She announced, then pulled Priya into a hug.
“By the time it’s dry enough to travel back from our location, I’ll likely be ready to put in for a power-based promotion. Maybe they’ll make me a General.” Priya joked.
“Somehow, it wouldn’t surprise me. Stay safe out there. The forward positions are going to have to deal with the retreat of both the humans and the monsters as the main army pushes them back.
I know your new unit is capable, but exhaustion gets us all.” The commander reminded her, then turned and walked back to her unit.
“She’s not a sentimental person, so she hides emotions behind stern warnings,” Priya whispered to Wolfe as her cousin led the unit away with the mundane army prisoners in tow.
They had also taken the captive witches back with them for treatment and recovery, so there was nothing left to do but clean up.
Wolfe let out a whistle and gestured for their backup from the villages to come forward, and the mutants immediately began loading up everything that they could carry or drag back home.
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There wasn’t much they wanted from here, but Wolfe did load all the null stones that he could find into a protective box that was in the command group’s damaged transport.
Once it was loaded in the box, Wolfe examined the markings, trying to determine what they meant. It was a yellow Diamond shape with a strange symbol that didn’t look like a magical rune at the top and a number eight at the bottom. In the middle was a four-digit code that Wolfe assumed identified the contents as hazardous, but he couldn’t tell in what way.
“What do you plan to do with that? Priya asked while Wolfe secured the box inside a pilfered duffel bag.
‘I’ll bury it in the Wastes. We can’t leave it lying around and risk having someone else pick it up, but we can’t keep it near us. Do you know what this warning label means?” He replied.
“Radioactive. During the Great War, they realized that certain types of radiation interfere with magic. It’s an effective weapon, but the radiation is poison to humans. I don’t know if the soldiers understood that, but wearing these necklaces all winter would either mutate or slowly kill them.”
That was definitely taking the ‘do anything to win’ philosophy to a whole new level. The men he had spoken to made it sound like capturing witches was a temporary measure to get through a crisis, but unless they had a lot of extra people and didn’t care about their lives, the mundane army’s tactics made the situation in the human nations seem much more desperate than a simple trade dispute.
“If there is a vortex still burning somewhere, I’ll toss these in it. The vortexes get rid of null stones quite well. Since this offensive failed, hopefully, they will give up on that type of insanity and stop killing their own soldiers.” Wolfe agreed.
Priya nodded her agreement, then looked around the camp to see how everyone was making out with their resource gathering.
“Witches, if you’ve got what you want, let’s go home,” she yelled to the others, getting them all organized to leave in an instant.
There were no questions about going back to the City. They all prepared right away to head back to the Den and had collected a wide variety of supplies left over from the army and the witches who had been there before them.
Someone had even dug up the leftover witch charms that had been hidden in the supply room as emergency spares and strapped the box to their pack to carry back with them.
Most of those enchantments would be for the daily operation of the camp, but some would be useful in many other ways, like the water charms that were used for showers and the mana-gathering charm that was used to supplement their abilities while their Familiar was so far away.
It wouldn’t let them build their aura since it only worked while casting a spell, but it was useful in combat when a witch was on the weaker side and struggled to keep up with the demands of the job.
Wolfe would start working with them on a more regular basis once the danger had passed, but many of the twenty still suffered from some measure of the damage that the gas had done to them during the early battles.
The radio messages that they overheard on their way back to the den were all positive. None of their six groups had taken any casualties, and four of them were on their way back to the Den, while one had returned to Morgana Coven lines with the unit they met, and another was called back to the Myrrh Coven lines for redeployment.
There were a lot of heartfelt expressions of thanks going around over the radio from units who had fought alongside the forces from the Den. They were all directed at the Priya unit and mostly for helping to heal the Witches to the extent that they could win today’s battles, and Wolfe couldn’t help but sigh.
Healing the damage done to them wasn’t a result of the unit’s skills but his alone. It seemed that nobody within Coven Command was willing to acknowledge that in public, though.
Asking Command to recognize that a Demon was responsible for healing their soldiers was not going to be easy, but all of the witches knew how he had gone through the new arrivals and got them started on their way to recovery. He might not get any recognition within the Covens, but out in the Frozen Wastes, there was no question about the level of respect and adulation he had earned.