Night was falling, and danger was growing. Blake Campbell turned the long collars of his gray leather coat up against the wind-driven rain, muttering unheard through the patter of rainfall and rustling tree branches. The straps of his heavy pack dug into his shoulders, a reminder of the distance he had walked.

“Never should have listened to the damn miller. Idiot has never been five miles from home.”

If the miller had not sent Blake on the wrong track or if Blake had trusted his gut, he could have been safe and warm and dry under the roof of an inn. With any luck, the inn would have had some ration of whiskey kept hidden from the war efforts. Instead, Blake was walking through rain soaked untamed forest, on a road barely worth the name and sunset growing closer with every second.

The itch in the back of his mind, the sense of unease that came from being watched was warning enough, even if the sun was hidden behind the dark roiling clouds. Despite the rain, the forest was dead quiet, absent the noises of animals and insects. Blake sighed. He would not make it indoors before nightfall, even if the next inhabited structure was over the next ridge.

Mud squelched under his boots as Blake searched for a suitable place to spend the night. The deep woods of Ninnesaw did not present many options, but Blake had made do with worse on moon nights. Fortunately, tonight was only a full moon and not the new moon. Nothing beyond awful came for anything less than a new moon. It was even the Harvest Moon, one of the gentler moon nights.

He could make do with a Lesser Warding From Harm with a ring of iron and salted runes if he needed, but something told him he should try for a Greater Warding. The moons had been growing worse these last few months, since the end of the war. Having ignored his gut once already today, Blake did not intend to make such a mistake again.

The issue at hand was Blake did not know of any proper ground capable of holding a Greater Ward. Back home up North he knew every ley node in three hundred miles. Here, he knew of none, despite spending the better part of four years in the Deep South. Four years of constant shifting battle lines and armies on the march did not lend themselves to detailed study of local natural formations.

The mountains complicated matters further. Nature formed itself differently in these Ebbolochian mountains than in the broad plains and forests of his northern homelands. The land was ancient here, some of the oldest Blake had walked on. Plants rooted themselves deep in the earth and drew power from the twisted foundations of the world. Water sprang into existence at the highest peaks, bright in the sun, and plunged to dark ravines, the meeting places of the stone pillars holding back the sky. The living creatures who called the mountains home, both animals and men, were changed by the long shadows cast by the upturned bones of the Earth.

Back home, Blake knew the signs for a ley node, but here the land was all wrong. The mountains cast their own power through the earth, disrupting and obscuring Blake’s sense of the currents of the Earth’s lifeblood. The usual signs did not reveal ley nodes, being instead inert locations at best or an active revulsion at worst. Pooled water at the base of a hill, upright stones with moss and lichen growing away from the sunrise, trees of unlike kind intertwined, all useless to him. But night was coming, and he needed shelter.

To his right rose a mountain thick with foliage and to his left the ground sloped gently away, the sounds of splashing water evident through the trees. Blake’s first instinct was to head to the top of the mountain for what he sought, as the peak would have bathed in the light of the sun and retained some part of daylight’s power.

As he pushed through the snarled undergrowth, careful to avoid any triple sprouted stalks, he saw the mountain top was all but barren of trees and grasses beyond the height of his knee. A good sign, when coupled with the lone tree rising proud from the very crown of the mountain. Rain obscured the finer details of the low slung branches, twisted one about the other, clawing at the air, but for a tree to survive strong at the peak meant there was power to be had.

Yet… Blake’s steps slowed as he realized what tree stood as monarch here. It was a black walnut, and had the scars of repeated lightning strikes. Doubly bad luck. A lightning struck tree attracted trouble, and a black walnut poisoned the land with greedy, spearing roots, desolating the soil under its domain. Recipes for disaster even if he could set a Greater Ward. He would have uprooted the tree and buried the scarred wood with iron had he been home. A fatal mistake to spend the night here.

The itch in the back of his mind told him it was little more than half an hour until dark. Blake would have to find shelter, and soon. If all else failed, he could do the Lesser Warding by the road, but recent events warranted caution. And caution required a place of power. Blake hoped the river held such a place.

Hurrying back down the mountain side, careful of his footing, Blake crossed the road, mud squelching again. A light flickered at the edge of his vision and he turned his head, fearing what he might see. Staring through the rain, nothing presented itself as the source. Gentle thunder rolled through the air as he lifted a foot to continue to the river and he sighed in relief. Lightning. Not an unnatural thing.

The river was closer to the road than he had thought, and he arrived at the bank not minutes after the thunder had faded. There was nothing special about the river, no looping bends or water smoothed stones. Less than five yards across and shallow, the banks were steep, and the river ran straight from the northeast to the southwest. No significance to its form. This would not be a place to aid Blake’s ritual.

The water could be used to reinforce one side of his Warding, as many things of the dark were loath to cross running water, but the same running water could erode the rest of the Warding. With no better options, Blake turned to return to the road, his hands already reaching deep into his bag to retrieve his Warding runes. Night was coming, and so were the things in it.

His eye caught on a shadowed patch in the center of the river, not a hundred feet upstream. A log? Blake spared a moment to investigate.

“Praise Yeshas,” he said in surprise. Perhaps his safety lay in the river after all.

In the center of the river was a wide sandbar, rising a foot or more from the surface of the water and ten feet across at the widest point. A Warding with one side of running water risked being washed away as the force of the water dragged unevenly, but a Warding surrounded by running water was balanced, and greatly enhanced. A Lesser Warding reinforced by running water was almost as good as a Greater Warding.

And a Lesser Warding would have to do, as Blake had run out of time. Less than a quarter hour remained until sunset; he needed a Ward now, ley node or no. With an armful of gathered dead wood, whatever was within reach of his path, Blake stepped into the river.

The cold shock of magic being washed away ran up his legs, and the hidden force of the undercurrents threatened to pull his feet out from under him. But the feeling subsided in moments, and he made his way across without trouble. At its deepest point, the river only came up to mid thigh, not enough to impede his movement.

Blake smiled when he set his foot on the sandbar. There was dirt mixed in with the sand, and grass sprouting. An island then, not a sandbar. Judging by the plant growth, a new one. This island was everything he needed.

In moments, Blake had the dead wood piled in the center of the island and his warding runes were in hand. With the practiced ease of decades, he made the Signs of Warding at the cardinal points and drove the four runes into the ground, reciting Devotion to the Lord for Yeshas’ protection. The Lesser Ward sprang into being, anchored by the runes crafted of iron quenched in salt water, and empowered by the new growth of the island.

The pressure from the river pushed against the Ward, the strain pushing against Blake’s Will in turn. For a moment he feared he had miscalculated and the negating force of the water would destroy the Ward, leaving him defenseless on this moon night. The pressure eased as the water formed around the new obstacle in its path, true to its ever adaptive nature.

Behind the dark clouds, the sun sank below the horizon. The unseen eyes Blake could sense in his mind vanished as the watchers left to find easier prey outside the safety of a Warding. They would return; they always did.

But for now he was safe. Wind whistled and slapped his long collar to his neck. A reminder he might be safe from the things in the dark, but not from nature itself. Exposed in the middle of a river during a rain storm could be dangerous. He needed to get a fire going.

Wood gathered in a hurry rarely turned out to be good wood for burning, and his branch pile was no different. Waterlogged from the rain and moss covered from the forest floor, Blake did not have high hopes to get these branches burning as they were.

No matter. By a stroke of luck, he had grabbed one dry stick, and he did his best to shelter it from further rain under his coat. The rest he pushed towards the edge of the sand bar, careful to not disturb the iron runes shimmering faintly in their places. Wood passing through would not interact with the Warding, but disrupting the runes would cause the whole thing to collapse. Holding the end of the largest branch in the water he calmed his mind to focus on the water in the branch, and the water of the river.

“One by one, and two of a kind. Every piece a whole, and every whole a piece.”

The chant was not necessary for the ritual, but it did serve as a focus for Blake’s Intent. As he continued, water began to bead along the length of wood, more than the sky brought down.

“Return to the Kind and join to the Whole.”

Drawn out by his intent, and his reminder, the water flowed from the branch into the river, where it joined with itself. It came slow at first, but faster and faster as the water in the wood remembered its drive to flow to the great ocean. When the branch was dry enough he tossed it back into the center of the island, and repeated the process with the next.

Rocks shifted on the bank.

Blake’s head snapped up and he had his revolver halfway from his holster before he saw the deer, necks bent to drink from the river. He snorted, and slipped the revolver back after a scan of the surrounding area, to be safe.

The gun settled heavily into the holster, a great weight of iron. Any normal man would have struggled to hold it steady, to say nothing of firing the great weapon. Designed for the Strong Men of Kindale, the revolver was a fine crafted piece of runework and precise manufacture. Taking advantage of the bearer’s size, the revolver boasted eight chambers for .44 elymis cartridges, and a center chamber for a shotgun shell, or slug. Blake had taken this one early in the war and modified it for his own use.

“Jumping at deer, Blake? What is next, butterflies?”

Rain had not dampened the dry wood beyond the surface by the time Blake returned to the pile. With a grunt, he snapped the larger branches over his knee. A sizable pile had formed on the damp sand by his feet, so he knelt to start the fire, and get some warmth back in his bones.

“Not perfect, but it will do.”

After a brief shuffle, he dug out the metal tube of matches he had taken from the supply tent. Jed would have taken strips out of Blake’s hide had he known. The Quartermaster may have indulged Blake’s requests for certain peculiar items, but theft was not something the big man tolerated.

The soldiers had repeated Jed’s mantra ‘Theft from the supplies is theft from the Federation, and theft from the Federation is theft from Victory’ endlessly behind the man’s back. Until he had caught them. They were quiet then.

Cold water dripped from the branches overhanging the river pulled Blake from his reverie. The first match he struck against the bottom of the tin failed to light, as did the second. He frowned at the brand name embossed in thick letters along the side. Everstrike, followed by the F.E.F. stamp of the Federation.

Blake shook his head. “Not what I would have called them.”

On the third match, fire bloomed. Blake wasted no time lighting the dried wood he had stashed away from the rain in his coat. He gave the fire his intent, promising the fire a longer life if it could only eat slowly. Fire took little effort to persuade, and Blake had no trouble convincing this flame to burn slow enough to last until dawn.

Not yet fall, morning would come before the wood was all burned. Winter might be a different story, but Blake had no intention of being anywhere near Ebbolochia by then. Four days hard travel would get him to Gryndton where he would catch a boat upriver and never set foot in the Fire of Ninnesaw again.

A pouch of dried fruit and meat sticks served as a celebration feast, washed down with a clear cup of water from the river purified with a silver rod for safety. The integrity of the Ward was checked during his water trip, and the river banks scanned for any unwanted eyes. Not even the deer remained. Blake would have preferred to take the time to record the day’s findings in his journal, but the rain was a hindrance. Tomorrow then.

Blake checked the flames had grown to a comfortable size and no further before pulling a length of canvas from his bag. There was nothing else he could do on the island, best to get as much sleep as he could and start walking again in the morning. He propped the canvas over his bag as a rain cover and ducked his head inside, coat wrapped tight to his body. It was not comfortable, but again, he had made do with worse.

If there was not such a need to be home, Blake would not have left the train as he did, and would have waited for the train to be repaired, or another route to open up. But the terrible telegram he had received required an immediate trip home, at all haste. Hence Blake’s current situation of sleeping on a sandbar during one of the most dangerous nights of the month, instead of a warm, comfortable, safe bed in an inn along the railroad somewhere.

Moments after he closed his eyes, he sat up and checked the Ward again. It never hurt to be safe. The Ward remained strong. Blake could sense nothing lurking in the shadows at the river’s edge. This time when he closed his eyes, the exhaustion of a full day’s travel overwhelmed him.

The City sprawled on the plains below, dark man-shapes spilling from the crumbling walls like ants defending their hive. The shimmer of Wards covered the sky, flickering as bolts of fire and blasts of lightning exploded on contact. Cannons roared, guns thundered, horns blared.

Blood ran through the fields, once sown with wheat and tabac. Columns of stone men advanced on the camps in the hills, turning to sand beneath the hail of bullets and hexes. Screams filled the air, silenced by gunfire. On the walls, men fought men, Knights fought stone men and beasts, brother fought brother. Sabers flashed, runes rang, and blood flew.

Above the City, the sky turned red. The red of marrow, the red of heartflesh, the red of things not meant to see the light. In the red sky, the sun turned black. The black of nothing, the black of the void between stars, the black of unbeing.

From the hole in the red sky, where the black sun blazed with baleful light, something stirred. Something looked through the veil beyond space, looked down into the world. And it knew Hate.

With a great inrush of breath, Blake started awake. The Eye within the black sun stared down at him, pinning him in place against the dirty sand. The purest malevolence emanated from it, scouring Blake’s mind with the very knowledge of its existence.

He blinked and the Eye was gone, burning red sky replaced by calm night, stars set in a black velvet expanse. Blake shuddered. Five months, and still the dream haunted him. Tonight had been the worst yet. Never before had the Eye followed him to the waking world.

“Tsk. Imagination getting the best of me. ” Blake shook his head. Kindale was a long way from here, and the Eye was gone. He lay back and watched the branches overhead sway in the breeze, shadows played against the stars. The rain clouds had cleared, allowing the light of the stars. The canvas lay in a bunch around his head, he must have pulled it away in the night.

Blake could not see the light from the fire on the undersides of the leaves. Night was still here, and the fire had gone out.

He rolled to his knees, revolver in hand, ready to fire on the first thing to move. The island was clear, and the Ward was still up. He jerked the revolver around to each corner of the island. Nothing moved in the river, no denizen of the dark preparing to eat his face.

Blake slumped back, arms relaxed. A nervous giggle escaped his lips before he could trap it. He should not have even tried to sleep. He knew better. A moon night spent outdoors was asking for trouble. He had escaped misfortune through pure luck.

A giggle echoed across the river.

The urge to blanket the opposite bank with all nine of his bullets, the eight standard and scattershot center, filled him, and Blake stopped short, his finger tight with the strain. He had not seen the source of the giggle and could not afford to waste any of his ammunition.

“There you are,” he said under his breath. On the bank towards the road, a patch of shadow stood out darker than the rest. More details emerged as Blake stressed his eyes. The thing was as tall as a man, and had the shape, but it stood impossibly still. No human could stand so still, as if a living photograph.

Blake leveled his revolver at the figure and scanned the bank to the sides. Classic decoy maneuver should get only an amateur Knight killed. Nothing stood out, even as Blake stressed his eyes beyond their limits. Only the thing of shadow. It stood, and stared without eyes.

A flash of white appeared and Blake almost fired again. But the shadow made no threatening move toward him, and dawn was not far off. Better to let the sun chase away the dark than waste a bullet on a thing he did not know could be killed by physical means.

The flash of white resolved itself into a broad slash across the expanse of the shadow’s head. A smile, filled with more teeth than Blake could count. And in the center of those teeth an eye blinked out. Tendrils of black flesh lifted from its shoulders, reached out across the river. Inched closer and closer.

In the space between one second and the next, the creature disappeared. Blake had not seen it move, nor could he see where it had gone. A quick glance told him the island was still clear. But the creature could be anywhere.

He passed the rest of the night in sleepless vigilance beside the renewed fire, eyes wide for the slightest sign of the creature’s return. He did not let it go out this time.