The first day that Jordan had helped his charges travel east after first traveling to the west, he felt like a moron. Even knowing that something greater was at work, he felt like he’d immediately regret his decision to leave his childhood home. That didn’t change as the house that had always protected him or in any of the chilly days that followed.

They traveled east for a day, then forded the river before continuing east-south-east toward the coast. Each day was bleaker than the last, and with so many mouths to feed, it wasn’t so long before their food supplies were running low. On the fifth day he brought a deer down with a lightening bolt, just to keep anyone from going hungry.

He worried that whatever was looking for them might be able to find him from that little spell, but Sister Annise assured him that the darkness couldn’t find them now, no matter what they did. “Besides,” she volunteered. “The evil that haunts this land is too busy tearing apart your manor, even as we sit around this fire.”

“What?” Jordan gasped. “How can you possibly know that?”

“See for yourself,” she said with a shrug, handing him the Book of Ways as she opened it to a page, seemingly at random. “These things are decided well in advance, and neither you nor I can stop them. We are all of us slaves to fate.”

Jordan ignored her often repeated line and instead studied the page, noting with annoyance that it was dominated by a large illustration of the manor house they’d just abandoned.

It was drawn in red and black, and though it wasn’t impossible that Sister Annise could have done it herself, if she’d been able to see, in this picture, though, it was on fire. That wasn’t the detail that caught his eye, though.

As he peered closer, he saw a tiny smuggled illustration of a thing near the house. It would have been impossible for the average person to say what it was that the thing was supposed to be. More than anything it looked like an overgrown scarecrow.

Jordan recognized it immediately, though. How could he not? That hideous tentacled brain had haunted his dreams for years. Of all the sights he’d seen in that pit. That one was the most terrible, and if he hadn’t burnt it to a crisp with coruscating electrical fire, it would have driven all of them insane and made them rip each other to pieces.

Just thinking about it again after all this time made him remember that terrible paranoia and he turned to the spidery text, trying to gain some insight into what was going on here. What he found was only further horror.

‘By the second night, less than a half of the inhabitants of Sedgim Manor still breathed. A few had run to the Greywood, but due to the inaucpicious nature of the stars, they turned on each other too in a series of terrible misunderstanding.

Since they were not directly under attack, none of the survivors understood the danger of baracading themslves into unused rooms to escape the madness. That was folly, for when the metal abomination returned after the fourth sun was set, most of those that were already weakened by its previous assaults succumbed to a number of creative suicides.

Though most of those with light in their eyes managed to hold on to much of their wits, Britha chose to—’

Jordan tore his eyes and slammed the book closed. What in all the hells did I just read, he wondered. He turned to Sister Annise to ask her, but when he realized her answer would be a repeat of so many others, he thought better of it and opened the book again, searching for the page to examine it further.

Just like before, though it had vanished. He searched by firelight, and eventually, he found the page he thought it had been, but now the manor had been burned to ruins, and the words no longer described the same thing. Instead, it talked about how quiet the town was now that the survivors had been rounded up and dragged off by the minions of death.

He shuddered and would have shouted obscenities if he didn’t have the children to consider. “Is this what will happen, or what has happened?” he asked finally.

Sister Annise shrugged. “What you read is the history of now. Whether they happened yesterday or tomorrow is a meaningless question. No matter what say they happen on, they cannot be changed.”

“So I couldn’t save them?” Jordan asked, feeling like he had their blood on his hands. “Not even if I summoned the storm winds? I could be there tonight. I could—”

“If you found a way to raise Siddrim from the dead and channel his full fury on the monsters in the region, you would only delay this,” she sighed. “Our destinies cannot be changed. They have already happened.”’

Jordan flipped to the next page and saw a picture of them sitting around the fire. He read about the conversation he’d just had.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“The blind prophetess assured the skeptical mage that what has already happened cannot be changed, then, before he could ask her about the god of secrets or the trials to come, she took the book and—”

He didn’t get to finish reading, because no sooner had he read it, then she snatched the book back from him and shut it tight before putting it in her bag. “Hey!” Jordan protested. “I was reading that!”

“You were,” she agreed. “But you should read no further than you have to. Reading too far into the future is bad for the eyes.”

“Trust me, I know,” she chuckled darkly. “Sufficed to say, I have seen enough to know the way, and you shall know it soon as well.”

“What is the tower?” Jordan asked. “And the God of Secrets? You—”

“The tower is where we will find the hermit,” she said blandly. “And all the other questions can wait until we get there.”

Jordan was less than thrilled by the answer. However, what had started as a quiet conversation had become heated enough to attract the interest of the children, and that was enough reason for him to drop it. If he continued, there would be questions, and as brave as these light-eyed kids could be, he had no wish to force the responsibility of how dire their situation had gotten on those who were so young.

. . .

They traveled for two more days and nights before they found the barrier. Well, barrier wasn’t exactly the right word. It was a line in the sand that he sensed as soon as they crossed it, though.

One second, they had crossed through the thin pine forest and were making their way down a dreary peninsula toward the sea, and the next, they were on the other side of the line, and they could see a small village and, at the far end of the spit of land that jutted off into the sea. Just beyond it, there was a lighthouse, too.

No, not a lighthouse, he corrected himself: a tower. It was white and elegantly tapered to a conical blue roof that blended with the sky, but it had too few windows for a lighthouse, and the shimmering that emanated from it was not any source of mundane lighting.

Before he could give much thought to it though, he focused on the fact that it had just appeared out of nowhere. That was far stranger.

“Did you feel that?” Jordan asked, turning to sister Annise.

“Why would I?” she asked. “I am no mage. The veil barely exists to me.”

“Why would it matter that I’m a mage?” Jordan asked.

“Because the veil doesn’t exist if a mage isn’t here to power it,” she said with a patient smile as if she was telling someone something they had known but forgotten. “This is why you are the Shepard. Because your flock could never find sanctuary without you.”

Jordan studied her expression, but said nothing as he marveled at her non answer. Until she’d spoken he’d thought that what they’d just passed through was something like an illusion, but her answer implied it was more like a pocket world. Such things possible, theoretically, but Jordan doubted that any ten masters at the Collegium Arcanum could construct a thing like this without divine inspiration from Lunaris or another of the gods.

For now, all he could do was study the landscape. No one but him seemed to be perturbed by the sudden change. Indeed, the children were more than happy to accept the change and quickly shed their cloaks to enjoy the suddenly sunny weather.

It would have been picturesque, of course, if the whole scene hadn’t just suddenly changed. If there had always been a village and a lighthouse clinging to the edge of the land while a sea roared in the background, then he would have been sure they’d finally found a refuge. As it was, though, his doubts were thick enough to blot out even the menacing red sun that was only now climbing toward its zenith to chase the grey one that had already moved past it.

The village, they quickly discovered, was called Landsend, which was evocative, if not particularly creative. They were greeted by the locals more warmly that expected. It only occurred to Jordan after a few minutes of conversation that these people had no idea what was happening in the world outside their little bubble, or whatever this was.

“You don’t get out much, do you?” he joked at one point.

“Out?” one of the farmers who’d been handling much of the talking said, “Why would we want out? To leave the veil would be to share its doom.”

“Doom?” Jordan asked, trying to draw out more details.

He was disappointed, though. Instead, the man shook his head and said, “These are not topics for a farmer. I confess to knowing little and understanding even less. You must speak to Tazuranth; he’ll want to speak to you in the evening after supper, I’m sure of it.”

Tazuranth? Jordan wondered, sure he’d heard that name before. He seemed to recall that someone from the dawn age had such a name, but he had not been particularly interested in the histories and legends of long dead mages, so he could not say precisely what the man was known for, or why someone would want to name themselves after such a figure, but he was sure he there was a reason.

That question didn’t last long. Soon enough, logistics became more important. There were no spare cottages, but there was a barn that wasn’t used much anymore, and they quickly set to work cleaning and organizing that to create a refuge. They’d eaten almost all their animals, but that did not seem like it was going to be a problem. After all, the village of Landsend was prosperous enough. They had fish, sheep, goats, and cattle, along with several steep step-terraced fields that were full of crops of all types.

A few years ago, any village in the county might have looked like this. Some would be better, and some might be worse. Now, it was a paradise that they dared not dream of, and for better or worse, it was home for the foreseeable future.