The Well of Wyrding (Revenant Wyrd Book 3) by Travis Simmons Page A

are amassing forces around a weapon of great destructive power. The dwarves are flocking around this relic as if it was sent by the hands of Chaos himself, which it very well might have been. This one weapon they could use to bring the legislature of the Realm of Earth to its knees.”
    “But that wouldn’t be so bad for the other races, would it?” Angelica asked. “Don’t all the races of all the realms live independent of humans?”
    “That is how it was upon a time. Now there are no forbearers of the races that remember the time before the humans came, except maybe the averanym, but they choose not to speak of it.” Uthia shook her head, the velveteen softness of her hair catching on the rougher bark of her skin, which randomly stuck out at precarious angles like it would on an actual tree. “Now racial government and human politics are so closely linked that it would be a great struggle for the multitude of races to learn a life without humans. Only the strongest of the races would survive the plight, for some races are very dependent on humans for their survival, though they weren’t always.”
    “What is this weapon?” Joya asked.
    “The Realm Guardians do not know much about it yet, but they know its name: Wyrders’ Bane.” Uthia’s voice held a shiver of fear.
    “You’ve heard of this weapon?” Maeven asked.
    “I have. Wyrders’ Bane is not part of the Wyrding Ways, but instead the opposite of the Ways. It is the antagonist of wyrd.”
    “What can you tell us about it?” Joya pressed, going back to eating.
    Some of the dryads, settling in for the night, began to take root around them. They lifted their arms high and the change began. The fingers of their hands extended from twigs to branches, and the leaves all along their hands grew longer and more mature. The toes of their feet lengthened and burrowed into the ground like roots. They closed their eyes, and their mouths and facial features looked more like the knots and scars on the surface of trees. Before long one might think they were only looking at a small tree instead of a once moving, lucid being. Others just chose to sit and listen instead of taking root as their sisters did.
    “I can tell you a great deal about it. What would you want to know about such a foul object?”
    “Everything, but mainly, what is its power?” Joya asked.
    “Very well,” Uthia agreed. “The chaos dwarves consider wyrd and all wyrders to be a plague that needs curing. Wyrders’ Bane is their answer to that plague.”
    “So they are looking to get rid of all wyrders and wyrd?” Angelica asked.
    “Very much so.” Uthia nodded. “The unforeseen problem is that when non-wyrding people learn of this, and with the current state of wyrd…” Uthia just held up her hands, and all of them understood that she thought the general populace of humans might rally on the side of the dwarves.
    “Well that’s dumb,” Joya piped in. “All creatures have wyrd in one fashion or another.”
    “But it’s only the wyrd of one fashion that it affects, not the other.”
    None of them understood what she meant, and so Uthia explained.
    “They seek to eradicate the Wyrding Ways within people, not the wyrd that runs the courses of the lives of the races. They seek to make the Wyrding Ways come to an end, not to end fate.”
    “Who would make such a horrible weapon?” Angelica asked.
    “It was not made; it was found many ages ago when the chaos dwarves lived within the Barrier Mountains. It was mined along with their ore. They found out how it worked nearly by accident. A long time ago, even the chaos dwarves had wyrders among their community. When the stone was found that all ended. Some of the wyrder dwarves escaped to their brothers, the dwarves of Nependier, where they were either killed or taken in. Not all the wyrders were that lucky, and instead became experiments for the inquisitive minds of the loathsome chaos dwarves.
    “Eventually they began to regard the