Ch 31
Even though the green tunnels were a great milestone, Erik wanted to ensure the crop's survived and thrived. He worked directly on the seeds themselves, making genetic adjustments that would enable the crops to survive the harsher conditions and improve their yield.
Half of each seed stock was altered, the remainder left untouched as a control. The changes were restrained and reinforcing rather than transformative, reinforcing cold-resistance traits already present in the plants' lineage. Cell structures were subtly strengthened, frost-response mechanisms made more responsive, and energy storage adjusted to better survive sudden freezes. Flavor, yield, and nutritional value were deliberately preserved.
Once complete, the seeds were returned to the farmers and planted openly in the newly constructed bioplastic growing tunnels. Altered and unaltered seeds were set in adjacent rows beneath the same translucent skins, sharing identical soil, light, and water. The tunnels broke the wind, trapped warmth, and shielded the young shoots from black frost, creating a space where resilience could be guaranteed rather than hoped for.
When the colder winds returned, the results were clear. Outside the tunnels, exposed crops withered and eventually failed. Meanwhile inside the green tunnel, the unaltered plants struggled but lived, while the reinforced crops not only endured but grew steadily, their leaves thickening and darkening with health.
The farmers noticed this quickly. There was no cheering, only longer pauses during morning rounds, hands lingering on leaves that should not have survived. Word spread not in proclamations but in planning. conversations about staggered plantings, winter stores, and seeds worth saving. The prospect of more food, and more kinds of food, mattered deeply. Fresh vegetables meant fewer illnesses, better strength through winter, and meals that felt like living rather than enduring.
It became clear that the tunnels provided protection, the altered seeds provided margin, and together they offered something the North had rarely known: food guarantee. Not excess. Not miracles. Simply enough variety and reliability to keep people healthier, better fed, and quietly happier than they had been in years.
The news spread outward from the fields into the city, and from the city into the wider reaches of the true North. It became another wonder of Weirstad, not one of spectacle but of certainty. Another reason for free folk to visit, to trade, or to settle. Another small, deliberate step toward a prosperity built not on conquest or chance, but on trust and preparation.
The Obsidian Leaf returned three days later.
Her silhouette appeared first against the gray sea, black hull cutting cleanly through the chop, sails reefed and disciplined. She came in heavy, not with timber this time, but with weight of a different kind.
The weight of coins, Iron, silver and gold bricks. The weight of unemployed Braavosi skilled labor
The weight of success.
Ivar was the first down the gangplank, boots thudding on the dock, beard braided tight and eyes bright with something between triumph and disbelief. Stigr followed close behind, quieter as ever, gaze already cataloging the harbor like a man counting what had changed in his absence.
They brought ledgers.
And chests.
Lots of chests.
The unloading took hours. Bars of iron stamped with Braavosi marks. Silver ingots wrapped in oilcloth. Gold, less of it, but enough to make even the most stoic dockhands pause.
And coin.
Weirstad coin.
The moneyers had not expected that.
Ivar slapped a bronze piece down onto a crate with a sharp ring. "They took it."
One of the accountants frowned. "Tested?"
"Of course they tested it," Ivar replied, grinning. "Bit it. Weighed it. Scratched it. Ran it past two moneychangers and a suspicious priest. Then they asked if we had more."
Stigr crossed his arms. "They didn't like the runes."
"That's putting it mildly," Ivar said. "Called it unnerving. Which is Braavosi for they trust it but don't like it."
Erik, standing nearby, allowed himself a small, satisfied exhale.
"How much?" he asked.
Stigr handed over the ledger.
The numbers were clean. Conservative. Undersold, if anything. Timber fetched premium prices—straight northern grain, cut clean and cured properly. Resin and pitch moved faster than expected. The bioplastic sheets, quietly included as packing material and samples, had sparked interest even without explanation.
"They think it's some northern bark-craft," Stigr said. "Didn't press too hard."
"Good," Erik replied. "Let them wonder. What about our trader friend and his son?"
"Belicho was more than relieved," Ivar replied. "I gave him the medicine you prepared for his son and the instructions that went with it. After that, doors opened quickly. Too quickly for chance."
He glanced around before continuing. "He pushed the trade through personally. Cut his own commission to the bone. And he gathered others for us, Braavosi craftsmen and skilled hands who'd fallen out of favor or run out of coin. People with reasons to leave."
Korb's expression hardened. "That kind of help never comes without strings."
"Exactly," Ivar said. "None of them looked like obvious spies. That worries me more than if they had."
Erik nodded slowly. "We observe. Quietly. Pair them with locals. No enclaves. No access to sensitive work until trust is earned. The hybrid tree spore will infect them in a few days and then if they so much as sneeze in the wrong direction. We'll know"
He paused. "Success draws attention. That's inevitable. What matters is whether those who come looking find a secret worth stealing, or a system too strong to be uprooted."
That night, the return of the Obsidian Leaf was celebrated.
The sailors who had once expected punishment now drank alongside locals, spending bronze without hesitation and laughing at jokes that would have earned them glares weeks earlier. Some still carried the stiff posture of men waiting for a sentence, but it was fading. Coin passed from hand to hand without suspicion. Cups were refilled without keeping count.
Nearby, artisans argued animatedly over half-finished plans. Gonir and two younger smiths sketched forge expansions directly onto a table dusted with flour, debating airflow and charcoal supply as if the matter were already settled. A pair of weavers listened with half an ear, more interested in whether the new looms could handle finer thread than in who technically owned the space. No one spoke of permission. They spoke of when.
Farmers clustered in knots at the edge of the square, their talk no longer circling around how long stores would last. They argued instead about planting rotations, about whether the altered seeds should go into the tunnels first or saved for late spring fields, about how much land could be risked without threatening winter reserves. Disagreements were sharp but hopeful. Survival was no longer the baseline.
Children ran through the streets in uneven packs, darting between adults and carts, shouting words borrowed from foreign tongues without knowing they were foreign at all. The streets felt narrower for it—fuller. Alive.
Erik stood at the edge of the square, hands clasped behind his back, watching it all with the stillness of someone who understood that moments like this could not be commanded. They could only be allowed.
Helga came to stand beside him, her shoulder brushing his, eyes following the same scenes. "You did this," she said quietly, not accusing, not praising. Simply stating what it looked like from the outside.
He shook his head. "No. We all did. I just guided them. They chose to listen."
Jakob leaned against a post nearby, arms crossed, scanning the square with an old man's eye. "Listening is rare," she said. "Keeping it is harder."
"Then we keep earning it," Erik replied.
A little farther off, Ivar raised a mug in their direction without ceremony before turning back to his table, already deep in conversation with a recruited Braavosi sailor about routes and contracts. Stigr stood behind him, silent as ever, watching hands and faces instead of drinks, counting futures the way other men counted coin.
Helga smiled, small and genuine. "They're not afraid tonight," she said.
"No," Erik agreed. "They're content."
Above them, lantern light reflected off new stonework and half-finished beams. Beyond the square, the bioplastic tunnels caught the moonlight in pale arcs, sheltering seeds that promised variety instead of scarcity. Weirstad did not feel like a refuge anymore.
Out beyond the lights, the tunnels gleamed faintly under moonlight, their bioplastic skins whispering softly in the wind. Beneath them, seeds—old and new—pushed roots into warming soil.
Weirstad was no longer waiting to see if it would survive. It felt like a place people wanted to become part of.
----
The council reviewed the early reports with more seriousness than celebration. Yield projections were still cautious, but the implications were unmistakable. Increased food security, even by modest margins, translated directly into healthier bodies, lower winter mortality, and fewer labor days lost to illness. The variety mattered as much as the volume—fresh greens and vegetables meant fewer deficiencies, stronger immune resistance, and children who grew rather than merely survived.
Helga spoke for the households, noting the change in morale almost immediately. People planned meals again instead of rationing them in advance. Mothers worried less. Workers took risks on apprenticeships and long projects because the fear of an empty larder had loosened its grip. Stability, once gained, reinforced itself.
Sigrun focused on resilience. A population that ate well endured stress better, fought harder when needed, and recovered faster from injury and loss. She pointed out that well-fed people were also harder to panic and slower to turn desperate—no small advantage in a growing city that would inevitably draw envy and pressure.
Erik framed it in simpler terms. "Food doesn't just keep people alive," he said. "It tells them tomorrow is worth preparing for."
The council agreed that the tunnels and altered seed program should be expanded steadily, not aggressively. No dependence on a single method. No promises made faster than they could be kept. But as a foundation for long-term population health and collective morale, the consensus was clear: this was not merely an agricultural success.
Attention then turned to the remaining problem—the four captured ships still riding at anchor.
The debate was sharper here.
Sigrun argued for retaining them as a defensive fleet. Ships meant reach, warning, and deterrence. Even a modest squadron could make raiders think twice. Others countered that idle ships drained manpower and supplies, and that openly maintaining a fleet would draw exactly the kind of attention Weirstad was not yet ready to answer.
Trade options were proposed instead. Sending ships to other free cities. Testing relations with Westerosi ports—Oldtown, Sunspear, Lannisport, Gulltown, Planky Town, the Weeping Town, even White Harbor. Distance became the deciding factor. Oldtown, Sunspear, and Lannisport were dismissed quickly—too far, too visible, too politically dense for early outreach.
In the end, they settled on White Harbor.
It was close. Northern. Pragmatic. A place where ships were valued more for their cargo than their origin.
Two of the four vessels would be sent, laden with timber, resin, and surplus goods, not enough to boast, but enough to be taken seriously. Their crews would be mixed by design. Penanced former sellsails who had reformed the most were paired with veterans from the Obsidian Leaf, overseen by officers Erik trusted, and supplemented by local recruits who had been training on the captured ships.
No single loyalty. No single failure point.
The remaining ships would stay, maintained but unadvertised, their fate deferred until Weirstad could afford either a fleet or the attention one would bring.
With that, the council adjourned.
-----------
With the city stable and the council occupied with longer arcs of planning and Runa busy with her own projects and mastering runes with the help of Bloom, Erik finally found something rare.
Time.
He spent it where he always did when problems resisted force or policy—alone in the lab, surrounded by notes, samples, and the quiet hum of restrained curiosity. One issue had been pressing at him for weeks now, unresolved not because it was dangerous, but because it was inefficient.
They needed more wargs.
Not warriors trained into the role, but true wargs—those born with the capacity to reach beyond their own skin. The problem was not training. It was discovery. Wargs were rare, and worse, unreliable to identify. Most never realized what they were. Others learned only after moments of crisis, too late to be cultivated safely. Chance and luck dictated one of Weirstad's most valuable assets.
Erik disliked systems that depended on luck.
He began with what he had.
Blood samples from every confirmed wargs in Weirstad, handled carefully, anonymized, catalogued. He compared them relentlessly. Patterns emerged slowly, then all at once. A shared sequence. A recurring marker nestled deep in the genome, subtle but unmistakable once seen. Not the power itself, but the capacity for it. A door, not the room beyond.
"So that's you," he murmured to himself.
Finding the marker was the easy part.
Finding people who carried it was harder.
He paced the lab, ideas forming and collapsing in equal measure.
'Thos isn't the modern world where everyone can be tested in a diagnostic lab' Erik thought
One option was direct contact. He'd have touching everyone, probing gently, feeling for resonance. Effective. Also impossibly slow, deeply inappropriate, and guaranteed to breed fear.
'I don't want to spend weeks doing this!' Erik thought 'There has to be a better way'
Another thought crossed his mind and was dismissed just as quickly. Standing beside Helga during her sermons. Offering blessings. Letting his power brush the crowd indirectly.
It would work.
Which was precisely why he hated it.
Too close to manipulation. Too close to faith being used as a tool. He would not blur that line anymore than iit already was, not here, not now.
He stopped pacing.
His gaze drifted upward, through stone and timber, toward the massive hybrid Heart Tree that anchored Weirstad like a living spine. Its roots fed half the city. Its canopy shaded markets and halls alike. Its spore cycles were already carefully controlled, tuned to release harmless biological markers for air purification and pollen suppression.
And then inspiration came!
Erik smiled.
"Of course," he said softly.
The tree already touched everyone. Its spores were everywhere an in everyone.
He didn't change its nature. He added to it.
Within the spore-release system, Erik introduced a secondary, harmless spore, biologically inert, incapable of reproduction, designed to degrade naturally within days. It carried no magic, no compulsion, no influence. It did exactly one thing.
If the spore encountered the warg genetic marker in a person's body, it triggered a temporary, unmistakable reaction. A vivid shift in skin pigmentation. Bright. Purple. Impossible to miss. Impossible to fake. Gone within a few days leaving no trace behind.
Those without the marker?
Nothing happened at all.
No pain. No side effects. No sensation. No change.
He spent the next few days refining the release timing, ensuring even distribution, testing degradation rates. When he was satisfied, he informed the council.
Reactions were… mixed.
Sigrun stared at him for a long moment. "You're telling me," she said slowly, "that anyone who turns purple might be a warg."
"Has the potential," Erik corrected. "Training and temperament still matter and decide if they can become one"
Helga tilted her head, thoughtful. "And they'll know?"
"Yes," Erik said. "So will everyone else. Which is why this only works once."
That sobered the room.
Sheriffs were briefed carefully. Instructions were explicit: no arrests, no pressure, no announcements. Anyone showing the coloration was to be invited, not seized. Observed quietly. Gathered discreetly in the Great hall. Explanations given later.
"We're not hunting," Erik said firmly. "We're offering answers."
The spores were released at dawn.
By midday, the city noticed.
A dockworker with purple hands. A baker whose face had turned violet halfway through kneading dough. A child laughing in the street, delighted by the color of her arms, unaware of what it might mean.
Confusion followed. Then curiosity.
Then understanding.
By evening, the sheriffs' lists had begun to fill.
-----
By the following morning, the main hall within the hollow of the hybrid Heart Tree was full.
Purple stood out starkly against wood and stone. Skin tones ranged from pale violet to deep bruised plum, some faint enough to be doubted, others impossible to ignore. People clustered in uncertain knots, voices low, eyes darting. Infants cradled against chests bore faint lavender cheeks. Elderly men leaned on canes, their hands unmistakably colored. The range alone unsettled everyone.
Korb, Jakob, and Stigr halted just inside the threshold.
They stared.
Jakob was the first to speak. "That's… a lot more of us than I was expecting."
Korb crossed his arms, scowling at his own hands. "I was expecting dozens at most." He glanced around the hall again. "Not this."
Stigr said nothing, but his jaw tightened as his gaze swept the room. Soldiers' instincts didn't care about color—they cared about numbers.
Helga approached them first, purple unmistakable even beneath the hall's filtered light. Ketil followed a step behind, his expression caught somewhere between irritation and affront.
"I hate this color," Ketil said flatly, rubbing at his forearm as if it might come off. "If I'd known, I would've objected on principle."
Korb snorted. "You and me both. I look ridiculous!"
"It's undignified," Ketil agreed sourly
"It is quite entertaining looking at you two" Helga smiled despite herself. "Fortunately for you, It is temporary," she reminded them.
"That's not the point," Ketil muttered.
Their attention drifted back to the room to the sheer number of people gathered. Fear, curiosity, excitement, and disbelief all lived together under the Tree's vast ribs.
"They didn't know," Jakob said quietly. "Any of them. They're so many like us"
"No reason to," Helga replied. "Most people never get the chance. Or if they do, the pull is weak. Or they dismiss it. Or they're afraid."
She looked around thoughtfully. "Warging isn't just ability. It's proximity. Temperament. Opportunity. And sometimes… something else we don't yet understand."
Korb's eyes found Erik across the hall, standing apart, watching rather than directing.
"You knew," Korb said.
Erik met his gaze evenly. "I suspected. Statistically, it never made sense that so few existed."
"And now?" Helga asked, practical as ever. "What do we do with all of them?"
Erik didn't hesitate. "What else?" He raised his voice just enough to carry. "Everyone trains."
A murmur rippled through the hall.
"Not all of you will succeed," he continued calmly. "Some may never move beyond awareness. That's fine. This isn't conscription. It's instruction. Knowledge is not obligation."
Korb exhaled slowly. "And who's teaching?"
Erik glanced at him, Jakob, Stigr, and Ketil. "You are. You four have walked the path already. You know the dangers better than anyone." A pause. "I'll assist where I can."
Stigr nodded once. Jakob looked overwhelmed, but resolute.
Korb opened his mouth to argue then stopped.
"No," he said firmly. "Not like this."
Ketil nodded immediately. "Agreed. Absolutely not."
Helga blinked. "Not like what?"
Korb gestured at his skin. "Not while we're purple."
Ketil scowled. "I refuse to instruct anyone while looking like a bruised grape."
A few nervous laughs broke out nearby, tension easing just a fraction.
Erik allowed himself the barest hint of a smile. "Very well," he said steeping forward and placed a hand on Ketil "Give me a moment all I'll reverse it"
"Good," Ketil said. "Then we teach."
He looked around the hall again, at the infants, the elders, the dockworkers and farmers and children.
"But why do we need so many wargs?" Stigr asked at last.
The hall quieted around the question. It wasn't suspicion in his voice, only curiosity. Numbers mattered to him. Every skill had a cost.
Erik turned from the crowd to face him. "Because sight decides survival, dominance and victory" he said calmly. "Because knowledge is power"
He gestured outward, as if tracing the shape of the city beyond the living walls. "We need more eyes in our cavalry, scouts who can see beyond hills and forests without riding blindly into traps. We need them in our defense forces and among the sheriffs, watching borders, roads, and approaches no watchtower can fully cover."
He paused, then added, "And we need them especilly out at sea."
That drew attention.
"I once read the work of a scholar from Yi Ti " Erik continued changing China with Yi TI as the cavitations were very similar "He was a famous strategist named Sun Tzu. He wrote that if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles. Victory comes not from strength alone, but from understanding and knowing where your enemy is strong, where they are weak, and where they do not expect to be seen."
Some of the council exchanged glances. Others simply listened.
"We are getting stronger every day," Erik went on. "But strength without intelligence invites disaster. Wargs give us knowledge before danger arrives. They let us act and merely react. They let us choose when to fight or when not to."
Stigr's brow furrowed. "And the sea?"
Erik's expression hardened just slightly. "The sea is where the need for intelligence and dominance is the greatest."
He folded his hands behind his back. "If we are to trade, to move ships, to defend our coast, then the waters around Weirstad cannot be left to chance. Ships are good but we need an edge over our enemies. We need wargs who can bond with leviathans, whales, krakens, creatures that see what no sailor ever will. Storms, fleets, threats moving beneath the waves."
A quiet understanding spread through the room.
"The land can be watched by walls and towers," Erik said. "The sea is too vast and open. It cannot be defended as easily. Not without help from our giant marine friends."
He looked back at the gathered purple-skinned crowd not as resources, but as possibilities.
"We need an army of wargs," he concluded. "We need enough to ensure that nothing approaches Weirstad unseen by land or by water or even the skies"
Stigr considered that, then nodded once. "Information is important," he said.
"Exactly," Erik replied. "Battles won before they're fought."
The Tree's vast hollow seemed to listen along with them, its roots deep in earth and its branches stretching toward sky and sea alike. And beneath the living arches of the Heart Tree, surrounded by people who had never known what they carried inside themselves, Weirstad quietly took another step away from chance and toward certainty.