Okay, first of all, things are definitely not business as usual around here. About a week after the Chiefs returned from examining the cave, First Nation dignitaries started showing up. They weren’t locals either. These were people from Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South America; the whole world. They were coming and going for about two weeks. It wasn’t a social visit either. There were no festivities or ceremonies to greet them. Something considered downright antisocial in those circles.

I don’t know what the leaders were doing here. They came and went. No-one’s talking. The Chief’s are cordial, but not willing to share what they’re up to.

‘This is my people’s experience, Ethan,’ Chief Dan said. ‘Something we’ve been preparing for since time began. It’s prophecy that the tribes of the world come together and destroy the evil in the world. I don’t know what more I can tell you’.

‘Well, you could include me in what’s going on,’ I said. ‘My quest created this particular prophecy. I would think you’d want me around to provide some guidance’.

‘Do you know any more than we do?’ Chief Dan asked.

‘No’.

‘Do you know what to expect’?

‘No.’

‘You may be the creator, but you’re not part of our experience, Ethan. I see no reason why you should have a leading role in our destiny just because you created it’.

You know, this quest AI has come up with is turning out to be bullshit. On my last quest I was right in the middle of everything. Bing. Bang. Boom. I was right there. I knew what was going on and I had an objective.

On this quest, I have no idea of what’s going on or even what I’m doing here. My role. Nothing. I’m getting absolutely no backstory, and when I access AI directly, all I’m finding is little descriptors like the dragon is of legend, often equated with Satan. Well, big whoop. What does that tell me? This is starting to feel more like a second rate vacation than a quest.

Anyway, I’m finding it all pretty frustrating, but at least I’ve time to reconnect with Leita. She’s finding working with Doc rewarding, but hard on her too. She’s helping people in need, but people in need tend to have hard stories that sometimes hit close to the heart.

She was telling me about this one guy who was abused as a kid. He cannot move past what became the defining moment in his life. I can’t say I blame him, but people are often able to move past their trauma to the extent they can cope in society. He can’t. All he can focus on is that one moment in time when his innocence was so abruptly taken from him. Everyone on the commune knows him, and even what he’s going through. Whenever you pass him, you hear something like, ‘Someone should do it to you. See how you like it. I was just a kid’. He goes through the same scene every day. Over and over. He doesn’t even see you when you walk past him.

The guy’s name is Mike, and Leita’s taken a particular interest in him, probably due to her own past experiences; she’s been there. Doc’s helping too. They’re having a hard time breaking through to him though. His mind has been looping on a particular event for most of his life. No-one has been there to help him work through it. When family should have been there to protect him from harmful deeds, it committed them on him. He who had nowhere to hide. Social services weren’t much better. They got him through his school years, but didn’t do anything to address the trauma. He had been left alone to come to terms with the violence of life.

You can talk to Mike if you stop him and engage with him. He’ll focus in on you and talk to you for a minute or two, but it’s only the extent of a passing conversation. Not much more than a ‘How you doing?’ kind of thing, where one or two short replies are the most you’ll get from him before he returns to his looping thoughts. Doc says these are the only neural pathways Mike has developed in his personal coping, but psilocybin mushroom treatment would provide him with new channels to develop stronger coping networks, and pathways to a more expansive life. I’m not a doctor, but having done mushrooms I can see his point. Mushrooms spark a tremendous amount of brain activity. I can absolutely see the potential to build new roads to counter those which are preventing you from optimizing your life.

The problem they’re having is Mike doesn’t want to take mushrooms. He’s totally against it and Doc and Leita certainly won’t try to force him. Right now Leita hangs out with him and gets him to talk with her a little everyday. It’s tough going. He’s basically feral at this point.

For me, the thing about Mike is he’s a Mark-Stepper. I know this, because ever since I’ve been to the Borderland I’d recognize a Mark-Stepper anywhere. It’s like they’re missing a dimension. They appear two dimensional like someone on television. Everyone could see it if they looked, but most people don’t tend to notice it, because their brain fills in the missing information.

I don’t know what to make of Mike being a Mark-Stepper. I’m seeing there’s a degree of Mark-Stepper in all of us and it doesn’t mean we’re bad people. Most often we are able to find a balance between this part of us, and what I can only describe as our altruistic side. Most people don’t inhabit the Borderland. They glimpse it, and even dip their toe in it, but fairly quickly turn away and learn to manage it. Not Mike. He’s living in the Borderland and he’s all alone.

A few weeks after the aboriginal Chiefs came and went, a number of young men showed up over at the First Nations. They’re of different races, but all aboriginal, and they wear their ancestral garb not only to represent, but also as a statement. They are very proud and imposing looking men. They’re big, have magnificent builds, and although I wouldn’t say they look threatening, but their demeanor signals you to keep your distance. Very dangerous looking men.

I don’t feel safe or comfortable around these guys. The only time I tried to talk with one, he just stared at me blankly, and walked away without saying a word. Overall, I’d just as soon stay away from them.

Tasha’s right in there with them, though. They follow her around like puppies, and if she’s just sitting around and relaxing, one or two of them will be sitting by her side, and she’ll be petting them, or rubbing their shoulders or something. It wouldn’t surprise me if I saw one of them start jerking his leg in the air like a big damn dog if she scratched him behind the ears.

No-one even knows these guys are at the First Nations. They don’t ever go anywhere, and they’re pretty good at making themselves scarce when they want to. Leita and Doc don’t. The only reason I know is because I’m always over there trying to get included in my own damn quest.

I’m not jealous or anything. I’m just telling you what’s going on over at the First Nations, and how I’m not being included. So what I did was I went over to Tara’s canteen to talk to her about them. Unfortunately Tara’s performance in this quest is as much of a shit show as everything else AI has slung together. Here she is a Goddess, and she didn’t even know the guys were over there.

‘Ethan, why would I know about that which is not my business?’ she says. ‘You don’t know what I’m doing here. Why do you always think everything’s about you? Maybe I’m here to do something for Leita, and it has absolutely nothing to do with you. Have you ever thought about that?’

‘Yeah, well, there’s a lot of shit going on over on my side of the quest too, and you’re the only mojo I can find around here. Maybe you might show a little more interest in my needs’.

All she did was let out a long sigh, because as you know, she finds me taxing at times. First of all, about that, she’s only known me during times before I’ve actualized. Everyone is taxing before they actualize.

‘Alright. How many guys did you say there were’?

‘Ten. And they’re all hanging around Tasha. She’s not afraid of them either. I think I saw her swat one of them the other day’.

‘Hmm,’ Tara replied. ‘And you say there’s only ten of them’.

‘Yep,’

‘Hmm,’ she murmured again. ‘Of course, there’s Raven’.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Well, they sound like the twelve stars of the Woman of the Apocalypse’s crown. Her protectorates. The aboriginals call them ‘The Twelve Warriors of the Twelve Tribes’. Are you sure there’s only ten?

‘Yes. There’s only ten’.

‘Plus Raven. That’s eleven,’ she says, and then she starts thinking about this, like I’m not even standing exactly right there, and supposed to be part of the conversation.

‘I should run over and see what Chief Dan has to say about this,’ she finally says, more to herself than me.

‘Yeah, let’s do that,’ I encouraged. ‘Let’s go find out what the hell’s going on around here’.

She let me go with her, and so finally Chief Dan opens up to me about what they’re doing.

‘We don’t know who the twelfth warrior is,’ he says. ‘Prophecy tells the twelfth warrior appears in our final time of strife, and at that time, the twelve warriors will fight as one. We kind of thought it was you. Prophecy says the warrior will appear from a place not known to us’.

‘It’s not me,’ Tara says.

‘Well, there you go Ethan’, Chief Dan says. ‘The reason we don’t tell you what we’re doing is because we don’t know ourselves. Right now we're just sitting around waiting. It would appear we are not in imminent danger at this time. What we’ve done is nothing more than a precaution’.

On our walk back to the canteen, Tara seemed to have lost interest in the twelve warriors, and I had to press the issue.

‘Well, what’s going on,’ I asked

‘I don’t know. I guess they're waiting for another warrior’.

‘Shouldn’t we do something’?

‘I don’t know what. Just let things unfold naturally Ethan,’ Tara replied. ‘If the time is right, the warrior will appear. That’s God's way. If it’s not the right time, it’s like Dan said; a precaution’.

Then she stops and starts looking at me like it’s the first time she noticed me all day. Since the time we went to look for treasure, I had taken to wearing camo pants and a light green t-shirt. I had my Bowie knife and a few other survival tools attached to my belt. I liked to be prepared since we returned from our expedition.

‘Why are you carrying that knife around?’ she asks.

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‘This,’ I say. ‘I don’t know. We took them when we went to look for treasure. I guess I just like having it’.

Then she looks at me, just like she looked at Tasha that time when she was trying to figure out who she was. Her head tilted from one side to the other, looking me up one side and down the other. Then, all of a sudden, she bursts out laughing.

‘What?’ I said, feeling a little self-conscious, seeing as she had been looking me over like I was a slab of meat. I sucked in my gut. ‘I know how to use this thing’, I said, grabbing my knife. ‘If that’s what you’re worried about’.

This only made Tara laugh harder and she started waving me away like she was going to bust a gut or something.

‘I do!’ I insisted.

Tara turned her back to me, and clutched her side with one hand while continuing to wave me away with the other. Apparently, if she even looked at me, she’d die of laughter.

‘Okay,’ she finally said, having laughed herself out and drawing in a big breath. ‘Make sure you keep that knife close to you, Ethan. You’re going to need it’.

‘What does that mean,’ I asked.

My perplexed look set her off again, and she just walked away, still waving her hand vigorously at me not to follow.

I guess those ten goons over at the First Nations are Tasha’s protectors, or babies or some damn thing. I don’t know what they are, but it kind of bugs me how close she is with them. It’s not a big deal. It just bugs me is all.

The main thing to worry about now isn’t those guys anyway. The festival is less than a month away, and we’re busy getting things ready. I’m going to MC the whole thing, seeing as we don’t have a band anymore on account of it being shit. The festival is turning out to be bigger than we expected. We’ve already sold over 80,000 tickets, and we figure with people just showing up and whatnot, there will probably be more than 100,000 people. We had to move the venue just north of the provincial park to accommodate them all. It’s the only First Nations land flat and large enough to hold all those people. Also the lands are right next to the sea, which is needed to transport the supplies and equipment we’ll need, not to mention, the festival goers themselves. The location is a few miles directly south of the mountain where Raven and Tasha fought the Sasquatch. On either side and to the south of the location is the provincial park.

The festival isn’t for another month, but some early stragglers are already starting to show up and set up camp. It’s a fun, trippy atmosphere down there, except a bunch of people are showing up and camping in the provincial park next to the festival site and I would call them disruptive. They’re like hooligans. They’re noisy and aggressive and it’s all being directed towards the people camping on our site. It’s like they’ve come to disrupt our summer of love, which is what we’ve been promoting the festival as being. They must have caught wind of it, and are against it. I don’t know what their deal is.

The presence of the hooligans is not deterring the festival goers from showing up and doing their thing. In fact they seem to be coming in greater numbers because of them. Word is out and they’re coming to join their tribe. They’re not intimidated in the least, and seem to be willing to take this party as far as the hooligans want to take it.

Bubba says I’m trying to turn this into the summer of ‘me’, because I’m spending so much time down at the festival site and kind of acting like the local celebrity.

‘Oh yeah? You’re telling them you’re the one who set this whole thing up’? Bubba says.

‘Well, I think it was me wasn’t it? What can I do if once they find out I am the mastermind of one of the most epic festivals ever held and want to share a bowl with me? It makes them feel a bit special. At least that’s the way I see it, and so what if I’m basking in the spotlight a little? As everyone around here seems to have forgotten; it’s my quest.

Anyway, both the park and our site are more forest and shoreline than anything else. We have a big, natural clearing for where we’ll be dancing, but most of the camping is done in little pockets of openings among the trees. You’ll find a group of a dozen tents here, and another 3 or 5 tents down the lane. This naturally interconnected camping web goes on for miles on our side and in the provincial park. There’s trails all over the place, and you just stroll along finding one campsite after another.

One night though, I was strolling along and I catch a glimpse of this guy hiding in the shadows of the woods adjacent to the path I was walking. It was dark and what I saw was almost a side-glance movement, but it was two dimensional. I don’t know how to explain how you know you’re looking at something that’s two dimensional, but it’s almost like they have this aura outlining their body to emphasize the nothingness inside. As I say, I only caught a glimpse of him as the path turned and a fire from a campsite shone a little in our direction. It was only a fraction of a second before he disappeared behind a tree. Whoever was out there, was from Borderland. I knew that.

I greeted and sat down with my new group of friends and started acting casual like, so whoever was watching me would think I must not have seen him. Soon we were laughing and trading stories, and I was using the time to figure out what to do next.

I didn’t want to stay too long. I wanted to catch my pursuer. This was a strange thing for me to want to do. Normally, I would think of my safety, try to get back to my people and then come back with a posse. Not this time. I didn’t even think of my safety. All I wanted to do was hunt this guy down.

I knew the whole area; all the trails and pathways. I had spent a couple of days with Kate figuring out where we were going to direct people to set up camp once they arrived, and where we’d place porta-potties and things like that. I knew if I could kind of sneak out without too much notice, there was a depression ahead on the trail where I could jump down and wait until my adversary passed. Then I’d sneak up behind him and take him by surprise. I jumped down, and drew out my Bowie knife. I also had a flashlight hanging from my belt, and I took it out too. It was a heavy duty metal one, and might serve as a weapon. It also had a fairly bright torch, and maybe I could startle my pursuer by shining it in his eyes.

The dude was taking his time. I waited at least ten minutes before I heard him approaching. He wasn’t walking cautiously though. I’d say his walk sounded confident, like he knew he would find me.

I waited for him to pass my hideout, and then quietly made my way back onto the trail. The forest at night is very dark, and I moved cautiously, but still almost walked right up on the guy. He had stopped and was listening. Maybe he heard me coming? I stopped and watched his profile, which I could now make out because of the aura thing. He lifted his head to sniff the air, not with his nostrils, but with his tongue. It was then he turned and looked directly at me.

I hit him with the light of the flashlight and I did manage to startle him momentarily, but only as much as he startled me. He let out a screaming squeal like an annoyed animal, and when his gaze returned to me, I did not see a man. I saw something more akin to a lizard or snake. He had yellow eyes and a long forked tongue flitted in and out of a mouth designed to swallow chunks of flesh whole. He quickly regained his composure. Even with the light in his eyes, he knew where I was. He was smelling my exact location with his tongue.

I charged, determined to get in the first blow. I leapt in the air so I could bring the full force of my Bowie knife down upon the creature and plunge it deep into his chest. He wasn’t ready, but that did me little good. His skin was hard and leathery like natural armor and my blade caused little damage, more or less bouncing off his chest. He hissed and hugged me firmly, body slamming me to the ground.

He threw me down so hard, I’m surprised I remained conscious. My wind got knocked out of me and all I could do was struggle for air. I was useless, only thinking of self-preservation. He could have killed me right there, but was rightly under the impression he could do that at any time, and decided to take a moment to examine me more closely. I could see the light outline of the forked tongue darting close to my face as he took me in. I struggled, but he easily held me firmly to the ground. It didn’t feel like hands clutching me. It felt more like the paws of a great animal, preventing my movement simply by standing on me. I could feel sharp claws digging into places on my wrist as he leisurely looked me over.

Having satisfied his curiosity, the beast grabbed me by the collar of my jacket, and started dragging me off the path and into the forest. What he had planned for me, I knew not what.

It wasn’t my struggle that caused the beast to stop. Something else had caught his attention, and still holding me firmly, he raised his head and turned it towards the path. Shortly after, the light of a flashlight appeared, and a number of voices could be heard. The beast dropped me and leapt onto a nearby tree climbing it, taking only seconds to disappear in its heights.

‘Hey man!’ I heard, as flashlights shone upon us. ‘What the fuck was that?’

It looked like the whole campsite I had been to was standing there.

‘What was that?’ Someone asked, as they ran over to help me up.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It was so dark. Maybe a cougar’.

‘It wasn’t a cougar,’ some guy says. ‘That thing was dragging you around like a sack of potatoes’.

‘A bear then,’ I suggested.

‘Maybe,’ he said, looking up the tree and trying to see it. ‘It looked more bipedal than a bear’.

‘Bears can walk bipedal,’ someone else says. ‘And they’re good tree climbers too’.

‘Yeah,’ the first guy says, ‘but it didn’t look like a bear and where is it now? You’d think you’d see it up there’.

‘What else could it be?’ I said. ‘We only have cougars and bears running around in this forest. It had to be one or the other’.

Everyone decided what they saw was a bear, and I returned to the camp with them. Now, they were all concerned about their food storage which was a mess. Coolers of food were open next to their tents. I showed them how to hang their food on trees outside the campsite, so animals could get at it, and a few other things. Then we built up the fire, and a number of canisters of portable air horns and bear spray came out and my new friends felt they were prepared for just about anything.

I was going to leave, but decided to stay with them for the rest of the night. I felt responsible for them, even though I didn’t think there was much I could do if that thing came back. Still, I felt like it would be like leaving babes lost in the woods. While they slept, I sat awake. I couldn’t have slept if I wanted to. My shoulder blades were sore as hell from the beast slamming me down to the ground so hard.

At dawn, feeling the campers were safe, I left them and ran down to a landline phone inside the provincial park. I called Chief Dan and told him what happened. He told me to sit tight. He’d send help.

I wasn’t waiting an hour and Raven showed up.

‘What the hell! Were you already down here? I asked. It takes almost a full day to get here by boat, and that’s the only way I’ve ever come.

‘No,’ is all he said, and then he got me to take him to where the fight took place.

‘How come your jackets all torn up?’ he asked as we were walking over.

‘I don’t know. Is it ripped?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, right at the back of your neck’.

‘That’s where he grabbed me when he was dragging me’.

‘Did he have claws or something?’

‘Yeah, I think he did’.

We got to the sight and Raven found more evidence of claw marks all over the ground. Then he leapt up onto the tree and just as quickly scaled it as the creature did. Halfway up he jumps over to another tree, and then another until he was lost to my sight. About 15 minutes later he returns on foot.

‘He’s gone,’ he says.

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘Probably back to the Borderland. Come on’.

Then Raven leads me off the trails and towards the mountain where the Sasquatch, the dragon, and the Borderland dwell.

We started climbing.

‘Are we going to the Borderland?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘We’re going home’.

‘How’ I asked. ‘By walking over a damn mountain’?

‘Nope,’ he says, stopping. We had wound our way up the side of the mountain and came to a precipice where we could look down hundreds of feet from the sheer cliff.

I looked at Raven and then down the cliff, about to take a step back for safety. ‘What are we doing here?’

‘Learning to fly,’ he says, and then shoves me off the damn cliff.

I can’t tell you how fast you’re moving while in a free-fall. I was rocketing down to the earth, at least in relative terms. Instinctively, I started flailing and kicking my feet trying to slow my descent.

Man, the earth was approaching fast. I didn’t have much more time, but I didn’t want to die. Something inside me didn’t want me to die either, and almost impulsively, my flailing turned purposeful, and I started moving my arms like I was swimming up through the air or something, and whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, I began gaining lift. My descent was slowing, and just as I would have hit the ground, I lifted off.

In all the panic of the fall, I had not noticed the physical changes to my body, but I had somewhere along the way, grown wings. Wings that were doing what my mind was telling them to do. Wings that could take me vast distances, and offer me a bird’s eye view of the world below.

My accent back up the mountain was leisurely and exploratory. I felt and played with the lift of the air pressure I could produce underneath my wings. It came naturally, like I had been doing it forever. It felt great. Liberating! I had gained the freedom of flight. I was flying.