Hudson - Trials of a Past Wood

Foreword:

I am starting this book a little differently to give credit to the wonderful artist Daniel Knight who did not only the covers, but whose creature and character design inspired this entire book! Below are links, in order of when they show up, of all the girls in the book. They are purely included for you to be able to reference and to give credit where credit is due. Their descriptions and the like only helped inform me as to how to make their personalities and settings. I will warn that not all of them are SFW, so look them up at your discretion,

https://www.deviantart.com/coldsixthousand/art/Voodoo-Witch-Ayida-784066365
https://www.deviantart.com/coldsixthousand/art/Forest-Elemental-Version-with-tail-in-comments-781379968
https://www.deviantart.com/coldsixthousand/art/Fire-Elemental-780415836
https://www.deviantart.com/coldsixthousand/art/Rock-Elemental-781150188

https://www.deviantart.com/coldsixthousand/art/cyberpunk-Harbinger-783131615

https://www.deviantart.com/coldsixthousand/art/Cyberpunk-Oracle-779981903

https://www.deviantart.com/coldsixthousand/art/Earth-Elemental-780326108
https://www.deviantart.com/coldsixthousand/art/Shadow-Elemental-780448749

With that out of the way, please do enjoy the book!

Introductions

Ayida hummed to herself as she walked across the floor of her small cottage, moving into the rather large main room. It was in a classic setup for a voodoo witch such as herself, though really she enjoyed Herbalist Extraordinaire more. After all, she didnt deal in zombies or curses. Well, not usually, but you need humans for those usually. Instead, she just spent most of her days working on her potions, hence why a large cauldron dominated her domicile, and the rest of the main room was simply made up of shelves and cupboards of ingredients so she could retrieve them.

She had smaller cauldrons of course, which she now pulled out and tucked under one of her arms to work with. The large one was for anything she wanted to make a large batch of, such as the growth elixir she made to grow her plants year round, medical poultices for the various creatures she had pacts with, and the poisons that she used to make wards that would make sure she could force invaders away like the time the king sent his army in. That was a day.

Now though, she felt one of her wards go off, just as the globes of magical fire in her house dimmed. The ward depicted a cave painting to her, a basic idea of what it saw that could be parsed easily and kept the magical tax of creating it low.

Claws, sword, and knife. Oh, wait, thats a moon behind them. Interesting.

The lights dimmed again, before the fire beneath her cauldron flared to life. It was all very cute of her visitors, but Ayida didnt want to be given a reason to have to stop them. After all, she lived in a wood, so her house was made of the most common material in the area. If she lost it just because of someone getting overly excited, she was going to be miffed. Now, where is the sparkroot?

The next painting came to mind, along with three others, and then one that was an actual photo. The first four depicted, a swipe, a parry, a shield, and then a charge. The last one showed a young man, clad in what appeared to be armor, being thrown against a tree while a large, hulking, black beast made its way towards him. Common soldiers garb. Velixia, please do be careful not to explode.

That got a click of gears and the whir of motors. That was actually somewhat surprising, especially as Ayida began to grind the root with one hand, and with the other redid the white, tribal markings on her body. Then again, she normally didnt wear her mystic runes, made up of stripes on her thighs, circles in a chain just under both of her shoulders that wrapped around her arms, and finally two crescent moons, one above and one below her nipple, two circles at the left and right of her nub, and large dot that was painted over the center of each breast. Honestly, that all was fun to do, even a bit arousing with how she had to lift up her large breasts to get the undersides with the paint. The problem was the face paint that covered everything above her lips. Like her visitors though, she had been expecting this visit for a few days now, which had allowed even the most odd of her friends to make their way here.

The next warning as to the young mans arrival came in the sound of a roar. Ayidas ears twitched as her purple eyes glowed green for a moment, the markings following in the action a second later as they helped attune her to the emotion behind the howl. She could tell what many of them were by the exact tone, but that left room for error. This sort of reading didnt. Pain, and failure. She had to disengage for some reason.

And then she let out a long sigh of relief. Good. I was really afraid she was going to over do it. I guess Im up next then. She dumped the dust in her pestle bowl into the cauldron, before waving over to the front of the cabin. A purple wrap came over and slipped around her head, helping to control her long, sleek, black locks, before a similarly colored thong and loincloth slipped under legs as she kept walking. She didnt want to be entirely informal after all, and she needed one of the bone pins in the wrap anyways. Made cutting the burnswax she needed a lot easier.

The final wards came with video, showing the young man as he slowly walked towards the cabin. He had a cloth out and wrapped around a short, silver dagger that was in his hand. It had to be the one that was missing from the scabbards on his belt, each made for a different type of dagger. It fit with the Steam Dragon insignia emblazoned on his breastplate, which was the heaviest his armor got. Imperial Lightning Drake standard issue, with a leather bracer for one hand, and a steam powered, heavy gauntlet on the other meant for blasting anything that got too close with high pressurized and heated steam. The leather greaves and shortsword on his back finished the standard kit, though she found it interesting that he was missing a helmet. Then again, given the circumstances of how he got the armor Well, the black bandana over his face worked well.

The boy had grown up well, with a strong chest, long args and legs, but he wasnt overly burly. Instead, he resembled the figure of a hunter more, which made sense with what Ayida knew about him. That fact would have also helped him even more with the beast he had faced before as he was likely faster than most soldiers would be and could actually use the fact that they were equipped with daggers rather than fumbling with them with fingers that were the size of sausages. Yes, he was everything she had hoped he would be looks wise.

Now he would hopefully be able to prove himself at heart.

A knock came against the door and she took in a slow breath in. It was time to get her act together. She was known as a Voodoo Priestess after all, not just so happened to turn one guy into a toad, but no, thats something you can never live down. Ugh. No, bad Ayida. She was supposed to be getting serious.

With one more breath, and slipping on some prayer beads, she finally opened the door. With one hand she almost traced her breasts before bringing its fingers to her lips, just avoiding kissing them. After all, the man before her would barely qualify as one. Perhaps eighteen? She wasnt sure actually. She had lived so many of her twenty seven years of life. Yeah, thats how old she was. Totally. Even with the distraction she could tell that her antics had the desired effects as shades of red managed to make their way past the boys handkerchief. Oh, and what a cute snack that the wood has brought me today. Are you sure youre not lost, little boy?