194 194 Home Grown Goodness
Given an entire day to pool their magic, the witches had come up with a very impressive meal for the Den. The Scouts had managed to hunt down a three-hundred-kilogram turkey monster today, and it had been roasted and was set out to be served with all of the holiday classic side dishes.
They had mashed potatoes, cranberries, yams, and biscuits with a berry puree that likely would be a jam if they had the time to make it, finished with what appeared to be ice cream.
“Where did you get cream from?” Wolfe asked as he saw the small dishes next to everyone’s plates.
“Coconut milk. The trees grow really fast, so we have lots of coconuts available already.” Priya laughed.
“Oh, this is amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever had this flavour before. Coconut, did you say?” The Fox Demon asked while she sampled the frozen treat.
“Yes, they’re tropical plants that wouldn’t normally grow here, but this deep underground, they thrive without any extra help but water and the artificial light. Their fruits have a thick white flesh and store water inside, so they make a great milk substitute. We don’t really plan to start raising animals down here, so it’s a good alternative.” Priya explained.
“I will have to come back again in a few weeks once you have a stockpile of food built up for your increased population and see if we can trade for some.” The Fox Demon told her with a smile.
“You know, I totally didn’t expect that you could speak with us, despite the curse. Is there some trick to get around it so that we can talk to the scouts?” One of the other witches nearby asked.
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“So you’ve been around since the war? That’s incredible.” The Witch gasped.
“How old do I look to you? I mean, I’m older than I look, but my Grandmother was the one originally cursed. I’m the third generation.” The Fox Demon laughed.
“Even I know better than to ask a lady her age.” Wolfe joked, making all the Witches chuckle and the Fox Demon’s ears twitch in amusement.
“It’s not like it’s hard for you to guess how old we are, though. Almost all of us were serving our six-month tour when the monster tide started, so we’re pretty much all the same age except the officers. Even Priya is only a few years ahead. We went to grade school together.” One of the witches from Sylvan reminded him.
That was true, there wasn’t really a wide range of ages among the Witches on the defensive lines, with a few outliers, but that wasn’t the point.
Wolfe sat down to eat the first full meal of their own homegrown vegetables while trying not to laugh at the happy noises that the Fox Demon was making.
“I don’t know what some of these foods are, but they are really good. Everything that we have is what grows here in the Wastes or what we take from the mundane armies, but their ration packs are pretty terrible and flavourless. So many of these flavours are new to me.” She apologized but didn’t slow down on her rotation of bites between the different items.
It was a genius plan. That way, she ran out of everything at the same time and was ready for the fresh plate that the Witches placed in front of her as soon as she finished with the first.
Wolfe turned to the cooks when they came to see how the guest was enjoying their cooking. “I learned a new spell today as well, so if you have anything that needs to be dried to preserve it, just let me know.
I will cast it on the storage rooms later so that the items in there will be preserved as if they were vacuum packed and won’t rust or spoil quickly. The spell is supposed to be able to make really good dried foods as well.” Wolfe told the cooks when they came to see how the guest was enjoying their cooking.
“Oh, that will be perfect. We have lots of berries to be dried for rations, and using magic would be much better. Is it a spell that Witches can use?”
Wolfe considered that for a moment and then nodded. “It’s air magic, so I think that you should be able to learn it. It’s not an easy spell to master, as it’s twenty layers of inscriptions, but I will draw it out and add some directions later so that anyone who wants to can try to learn the spell.”
Once they were finished eating, the Fox Demon returned to her village to let the locals know of the good news and pass on the message about the travelling doctor schedule that the Witches had worked out.
Only a few of the witches would go at a time, and they would visit seven villages, with a plan to spend one day per village and then return home again. That should give them enough time to get everyone else in the area back to get healed, and the next village would have advanced warning so that injured scouts and hunters could take the day off to get patched up before going out again.
There would be two groups going out at the same time so that they could cover fourteen nearby villages in total. That only took them a bit over thirty kilometres from the Den, so they could theoretically come home every night, but the villagers would want them to stay and enjoy their hospitality as a form of thanks.
Four witches out of the hundred and sixty or so that they still had were no big deal in terms of total power, but it was essential to Wolfe’s vision of becoming a central hub here in the Wastes.
First, he needed to get everyone in top shape. Then he would get the neighbours all armed up and trained. Once that was done, they could start building more luxurious villages again and form a proper set of fortifications to keep the mundane army from easily passing through their territory.
According to what Wolfe had learned, the army attacked nearly every winter, but usually on a much smaller scale and with a focus more on stopping the witches from moving their borders forward than attacking existing villages.
Neither side really cared about the residents of the Frozen Wastes. At least, not until now.