‘What the hell is that?’ Ted said, looking at the charred prints in the mud by the side of the wagon. They were about the size of his forearm, but had a similar look to a deer hoof-print. The mud around them was darkened as is flame treated. Cam looked over the side of the vehicle, quizzically.

‘Oh, we call those Burners. They’re pretty common around here. They’re like deer from our world, but about twice as big, and they’re able to set things on fire. Sometimes accidentally as well; they’re not too smart.’ He settled back to manage the horses that were pulling the wagon forward.

It had taken a day and a half for a traveller heading in the right direction to pass by Blackmoor; when they had, they had been more than happy to take Ted on ‘to have some fine company in the hundred miles of briar filled fields.’ Cam was an Earth human from a country in east Asia that the poorly travelled Ted had never visited; cheerful and intelligent, his best feature by far was that he was leaving the tiny town that Ted had been stuck in after missing the Portal to the Front. He’d accepted the offer, and climbed up on the creaky caravan style cart.

They’d actually made it through those miles of hilly, thorny fields quickly, and had now abandoned the well paved stone roads for wide, hardened mud tracks, surrounded by unmaintained countryside; sparse trees, bushes and hills. The wagon that Cam drove was a large, boxy thing, made of old wood and covered on all sides, but open with a ledge at the back. Despite seeming pretty slow, Ted suspected there was some trickery going on with the transport, as they seemed to be covering the distance faster than a slow horse-drawn junk box on wheels should be able to go. Significantly faster.

‘They can set things on fire?!’ Ted asked, shocked. ‘How? Do they carry boxes of matches?’ He watched the tracks go off the path and into the forest as the cart trundled on.

‘No.’ said Cam, amused. ‘They’ve got some elemental magic powers. Surely you got told about all this in Basic?’

‘Basic was two weeks of being taught to suck eggs about the CPS, avoiding getting involved in fights between religious sects, and being fed weird propaganda. They mentioned nothing about fire breathing deer, and frankly I’m not sure I’d have believed them anyway. When they finally let us go we were attacked by a big four armed gorilla and that was about the closest thing we got to a lesson. How do the deer have magic?’

Cam laughed.

‘It sounds like the Basic training has been getting worse, I’ll give you that. The deer are magic because the whole world is full of the stuff. From what I understand, when the Enemy and the Authority chose the planet as a battleground, they infused the whole planet with it, using it to fuel the CPS and letting all of their followers gain additional abilities. This also leads to whatever plants and animals already existing on the planet getting weird and wonderful buffs. Any native population too, though the planets picked aren’t normally well populated. I’d be interested in hearing about your fight with the Gajai though; they normally don’t attack people.’

Ted stared at Cam in surprise. Here was a real person, an outsider, confirming at least half of the nonsense that they’d tried to tell him in Basic was true. He’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the curtain to fall down and to see the Wizard of Oz was just a man with a microphone. But Cam was saying that there really was a wizard, and he’d brought along some fire breathing deer with him.

The metaphor fell flat a little bit because Ted knew that there really were wizards in the world - hell, he was a beginner one himself - but it just hadn’t seemed likely that the whole story with the Authority and the Enemy was true. He said as much to Cam, who laughed again. He was a very easy going man; he certainly cuffed Ted a lot less than Jerah did for perceived blasphemy.

‘Oh, no, they’re real. But they’re also very busy. It sounds like you were never in the army in your world; did you ever work in any kind of company with middle management? Because basically, that’s what our government here is. There are some competent people at the top, reporting directly to the Authority, and then a few below them, but pretty soon the inefficiencies start creeping in, and you get people hired to manage the inefficiencies, and people hired to manage the managers who manage the inefficiencies, and people brought in to manage the changes that the inefficiency managers bring in. You know how it is.’

Ted thought back to his brief stint in gainful employment, outside of working as a lollipop man. He’d spent three months in a call centre, dialling up every number he was given and telling them that he was aware they’d been in a car crash that wasn’t their fault, and asking if they wanted to sue for compensation. Despite the fact that he personally was timed for when he went on toilet breaks or for lunch, his boss had wandered round distracting people and having ‘meetings’ all hours of the day, to the point people wondered what he was there for. He’d joined at a time of growth for the company, and so he’d been able to spend one day at a Change and Empowerment day, where they spent eight hours doing personality quizzes, building things out of lego, and shouting out words that people felt were empowering.

It had certainly been more fun than the cold calling, but it had also felt like a lot of bullshit costing a lot of money.

‘I know what you mean.’ he said, nodding. ‘It was the same where I come from.’

‘Now, remember that this system is half a planet wide. Everyone is doing their best, but every few months or few years they come up with a different way to train the recruits, a different way to source them. When I was in Basic, it was a month long, and they kept insisting that all squads had one of every species in it. Which was interesting, don’t get me wrong, but the Mollusca don’t even experience space and time in the same way that we do, and the Arachnid in my team tried to eat the Sassar before we’d even been introduced. It worked out in the end, but no one had planned for culture shock, or the fact that we were all reeling from just having died. I thought I’d gone mad!’

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‘Thank you!’ Ted said, pleased to have found a fellow victim, though keen to circle back to the Mollusca and Arachnids. ‘No one in my cohort even questioned the whole death part! They all just shrugged it off, as if they’d expected it because they were such devout believers.’

‘That’s rubbish. You must have had some very self confident and pious pals there. Most of us entering are pretty confused, don’t worry!’

‘But you were all believers? Strongly religious?’ Ted asked.

‘Well, more or less. Are you not?’ Cam said, an eyebrow raised. Ted thought about how to respond. Was he taking a risk here? He’d not mentioned his lack of religion to anyone since Kai, who hadn’t seemed that bothered. But Kai was clearly part of a pretty crappy system, so that didn’t make it safe.

‘I’d not say I was strongly religious.’ Ted replied, cautiously. Cam shrugged.

‘That’s okay my friend, we all walk our different paths. Or, as the Mollusca say, we all leave behind our own slime trails. The Lord accepts us all.’

‘The Mollusca are snail people?’ Ted asked.

‘They don’t carry shells, so more like slug people. But they’re not much smaller than humans and they can shape their bodies into appendages if they have to. They all tend to learn kinetic and telepathy magic very quickly though, so they rarely have to.’ Cam said.

‘Weird.’ Ted said, before he could stop himself. Cam just laughed.

‘You’ll get used to them. They’re friendly enough. Everyone is; we’re all here for the same cause.’

‘Fighting the Enemy.’ Ted said, uncertainly.

‘That’s the one.’ Suddenly, Cam shuddered, his eyes flickering rapidly, before he shook himself, and pulled on the reins on the horse, which slowed. ‘Though on that topic, I think we may have our own little enemy ahead of us.’

Ted looked around, trying to see what Cam had spotted. There were a few more charred hoofprints around them, but not many more than before. The road bent round to the right, and the flora either side of the road blocked any view.

‘I can’t see anything.’ Ted said to Cam, who was climbing off the front of the wagon and heading round to the back.

‘One of my Skills is Foresight, though it’s not very strong.’ he said, matter of factly as he pulled something out of the storage of the wagon. He grabbed a second item and put it under his arm.

‘But it’s just told me that when we go around that bend we’re going to be attacked by a large Burner who suspects we’re here to challenge him for mating privileges.’ he finished, walking back to the front of the wagon. He was holding a simple spear and a buckler.

‘What?! You’re messing with me. How could you possibly know that?’ Ted asked.

‘Well, I’ll admit that the mating privileges was an assumption on my part; deer husbandry isn’t one of my skills. But he sure seemed angry. I believe you are skilled with a spear and shield?’

Ted looked down at Cam, horrified.

‘No!’ he said.

‘I believe you are a GateKeeper.’ Cam said, calmly.

‘Didn’t we just discuss how crap my training was?’ Ted shot back.

‘I believe in you.’ Cam said, and if Ted didn’t know better, he’d swear the tall man was hiding a smile. Ted climbed down from the passenger seat of the wagon.

‘What would you have done if I hadn’t been here?’ Ted asked, looking for a way out.

‘Oh, I would have died horribly in a fire, I imagine, my friend. Thank the Lord you’re here.’

He held out the spear and buckler to Ted, who reluctantly took them.

‘Good man. Strap that shield on, and we’ll head round. We’ll leave Jennie here.’ he said, patting the horse.

Ted strapped the shield on and followed Cam uncertainly, as the man strode confidently down the road.

They rounded the bend, and Ted was relieved to see that there was nothing on the road in front of them, for at least a half mile down the road. The raised banks of the road were empty too, and he couldn’t see anything near the forest edge.

‘Okay, you got me.’ he said to Cam as he walked up to stand next to him. ‘Well done.’

‘One moment.’ Cam said, holding a finger up.

Suddenly there was a guttural bark from the woods. There was movement, the sound of branches breaking, trees creaking, loud steps, and then suddenly a huge stag leapt out down onto the road, landing smoothly thirty metres ahead of them, and turning to face the two.

It looked a lot like the deer that Ted had seen in his world; four hooven legs, dark brown fur, small head on a long neck. Ted had always thought of them as small skinny horses, when he’d ever thought about them at all.

This one was not skinny, however. Under its fur were rippling muscles, and it was at least as big as the horse that had been pulling their wagon. Its black antlers were as tall as it again, and wide, branching out like leafless trees into intricate patterns that drew the eye.

‘Shit.’ Ted said, almost dropping his spear. The stag was looking at him, a bestial intelligence in its dark brown eyes. It stamped a hoof, and flames sparked up from the ground where it struck.

‘They’re not as dangerous as they look.’ Cam said calmly beside him. ‘Though don’t get caught on those antlers, they’re sharp and covered in poison.’’

‘Shit.’ Ted said, again. ‘Do they really breathe fire?’

‘Oh no, not really; their hooves can set things alight if they impact hard, and they can radiate intense heat, but that’s about it. Most of the fires they set are accidental. Don’t worry, you’ll be okay. I’ve seen it.’

As if to illustrate the point, the Burner stag stamped his hoof again, flames once again forming and dissipating around its hooves.

*New Mission Received*

The notification popped up in Ted’s vision. He dismissed it.

The stag lowered its head, and charged.