A grueling month had passed in some of the densest thickets he’d ever seen. This was plain druid work here; there was no debating it. Everyone knew with a grim final knowing what work this was. It was in the way the pethorn trunks curled and knotted with very specific geometry. Waving and flowing in regular patterns that looked like roiling waves. Something about this operation percolated in the back of Grant’s mind however. It wasn’t the exhausted men nearing their limits. Nor was it the agitating nature of Willis’ heavy handed corrections on the prisoners. Not even Elro’s snide remarks from the start of the third week. Quite simply, Grant was near or at his physical limit. Consistent sleep beyond five hours for a month straight with no real breaks wore on you. Grant was simply ready for some time off without needing to keep an eye open.

  On the weekends Grant instituted long rests, just to keep up with the demands of the deep pethorn patch. By the second week of the unamended brutal schedule, Grant started to hallucinate. It was always sleep deprivation that caused small skittering shadows in the corner of his vision. Delayed reaction times were more of concern to Grant. One wrong calculation and a prisoner could get a blade in and end his life. Not that dying was particularly scary, it was the fact that there wasn’t anyone on the other end to revive him that was the terrorizing aspect.

  The long weekend schedule was received well by the work gang. Aside Willis’ harsh crackdowns, Grant’s appeal to their humanity kept them from being too riotous in the intervening time. Grant sat on the back of Finch as he glared at the flowing stream. A long snaking cut through the pethorn patch made its way deep south. Grant saw the effort it took to get here and wondered what the point of doing this was. They could have used the river to get here in the first place. He couldn’t understand why they had roughed it thirty miles through the middle of nowhere just to see an easy transport lane already here.

  Exhaustion bore down then, his eyes twitching side to side beyond his control. His hands came up and relieved the aching pressure behind the windows to his soul. Grant looked up to see the slogging remains of the cart crew and Willis mulling around in camp. He turned with Finch and strode over there. “Gentlemen.” Grant said with a raised voice.

  The rest of the milling men slowly looked up from their disheveled states back to Grant. Jeru Elro, Willis, Caleb Marrin, Hollis Roul, Emmett Kline – all of them carefully held Grant in their vision.

  “All of you performed admirably well over the last three weeks. I might even dare to say you lot were the best I could have asked to work with.” Grant took hold of the box of fine whisky they’d been slowly draining over the last couple weeks. “I’m going to let all of you polish off the rest of the Whisky and Chocolate for good behavior and for a job well done. Once you’ve set up camp and gotten a fire started, we can celebrate our achievement.”

  They shuffled around aimlessly as camp was set. Most of them had worn holes through clothing, ruined boots, and all of them had missing gloves. Gloves were a foregone conclusion by the second week Grant remembered. What was left to cover the men’s hands were ruined rags that all were stained a light pink. Grant remained seated on the back of Finch, desperate to fight off exhaustion.

  His eyes wandered as the crew meandered, Grant wondered how his family was back home without him. A small part of him, the abused little thing it was, worried about his new lineage. Fields of Green, it just registered to him. He’d gone a month now and didn’t spend more than a passing moment thinking of them. Grant looked down at his hands and looked deeply at the ridges in them. Deep dark furrows lined them both, contrasted with the lighter callouses that roughened his skin. “Fields of Green.” He muttered softly.

  His eyes drifted back up to the camp, seeing it was nearly ready to pass the party favors out. Before he could squeeze his thighs to motivate Finch, the beast started walking on its own in the direction he wanted to. Looking down at the animal, Finch’s ears flitted back towards Grant as if to state something. What that was Grant didn’t know then. But what he did know was that some celebration of a completed shift was in order.

  He slid off of Finch and took the box to the center of Camp. Willis stood nearby with a disapproving look, it wore off the moment a shot of whisky found its way into his hands. The line officer looked down and realized something in the reflection of the dirty brown fluid. Tilting the cup, Willis took a shot and turned to belt out orders elsewhere. Something inside of Grant registered Willis’ liking to drink, and that the only thing that held the stiff bastard back was duty to the state.

  The men smiled for the first time in ages. Grant returned the warmth and served them all plenty to drink, serving himself on occasion more than he had in the last couple weeks. He could feel the exhaustion leak further into his bones with the stiff drink then. Truly it had been a hellish hitch. He sat downstream of the cooking cast iron pot. The smell of bean and salt pork stew filled his nose then. He felt nauseous from the smell of it, having survived off of it for the last month. Familiar complaints made their rounds with no real emphasis behind them.

  Willis sat next to Grant, visibly tipsy, and spoke. “This sucked.”

  Grant smirked, not expecting Willis to open like this.

  “Not used to speaking your mind?” Grant mused.

  “No.” He remarked, looking at nothing in the distance.

  A moment of silence stretched between them, mirroring the camp’s eerily quiet mood. The trees at the edge of camp shimmered in the breeze. The day having its final golden rods peering through the long stands around them. Grant looked up to see the golden orange clouds in the sky. “Reminds me of firefruit Ice Cream back in Port Daleth.”

  Willis turned his head fractionally, letting Grant catch the faint scar he hadn’t noticed until now. “The clouds?” His head then turned to look up at the lingering sky.

  Grant nodded. “Yeah.”

  Willis shrugged. “I cant tell.” He remarked plainly. “I’m colorblind.”

  Grant looked up at the sky, seeing the beautiful hue. “I never noticed.”

  Willis took another sip of his whisky. “I don’t like people to know I’m colorblind.”

  Grant envisioned what Willis was talking about, too many questions filled his mind’s inability to process them. The feeling muddled into a pool of growing sorrow he had. A deeply unsettling realization that normal looking people have their own unseen struggles too. Here they sat, overwhelmed by all of creation’s wonderous offerings at their height. And Willis couldn’t appreciate any of it.

  “I couldn’t imagine.” Grant said softly.

  Willis nodded. “I don’t need to.”

  Grant brought his hands up and massaged his face, stretching the rest of his body as he thought on it, a long yawn echoed off the back of the camp before he could finish his thought. Grant sat quietly, letting the past month fall into place. It finally made sense now that he had a true measure of Willis. “That explains a lot, Willis.” He said in a assured tone.

  Willis sat quietly, watching the sky. His hands wrapped around the drink that had allowed him to open up to Grant. “You’re… not going to ask about it?”

  Grant remained still, enjoying the feeling of a deep stretch. He let the moment sit before asking. “Did you ever mix up the red soap for blue toothpaste rations?” He asked noncommittally, defusing the tension with a joke.

  Willis’ eye widened and smirked. “Y’know. I did.” He chuckled, probably for the first time since he started working for the prison. “I did the first few times. But they label everything nowadays. Just had to read the packaging more carefully.”

  Grant smirked, thinking about it more clearly now that he was opening. “I have rheumatism in my knees.” He flexed one as if to demonstrate, his left knee creaking on command it seemed like.

  Willis chuckled. “One of the few things army docs couldn’t fix.”

  Grant chuckled. “They could sew you up, stitch you back together from death. But some knee pain?” Grant let his hand travel with his drink in a long arc across his horizon. “What a cruel twist of irony. Smeared seven times in the line of duty, brought back together just to get discharged over my knees.”

  Willis shook his head and smirked, looking down from holy creation and down into the bottom of his drink. “This isn’t the good stuff.”

  Grant nodded. “We can’t issue alcohol too strong to use. But just strong enough to drink.” He experimentally swirled his drink and looked back at the camp. The prisoners were a mix between warily watching them, and going about their tasks.

  Willis turned serious, well more serious than the previous conversation had proved. “But you let them harvest sap in a contest over this month.”

  Grant smirked. “This doesn’t leave you and me, Willis.” Grant took another sip of his drink and spoke again. “That forty gallons of sap there isn’t for the company, its for a powderman I know.”

  Willis looked mildly annoyed.

  “How much is the state paying you, Willis?” Grant mused.

  “Sixty-“

  “That isn’t enough, Willis. For this line of work? For this much effort?” Grant sank the last of his drink and sat his shot glass down. “I didn’t like it either when I first started, but you have to get some perks from working this job outside of the satisfaction of doing the job. We’re not in the army anymore, Willis, we’re out. Nobody’s going to care if I take this home.”

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  Willis sat quietly, processing the information.

  “It makes sense why they made you a Lance Corporal, Willis.” Grant nodded, his hand hesitated near the bottle. He wanted to drink more, but the situation was already tenuous. “You’re by the book. I respect that a whole hell of a lot Willis.” He decided to leave the drink alone, feeling his admiration for Willis to inspire a moment of sobriety.

  “A lot of people said that since I joined, since I left.” He muttered.

  “Dissatisfied?” Grant wondered.

  Willis nodded, almost like a pained admission of guilt.

  “I know that feeling.” He said matter of factly. “It feels like you’re in a cage with a bunch of animals.” Grant adjusted himself in his seat, settling in once again. “How can you go from seeing and doing what you’ve done in the army. To…” Grant quieted down as he looked at the unplanned nature of the camp, idle men shuffling around. “Instructor Dave would have had a field day.”

  Willis chuckled, harder than he intended. “Oh, Fields of Green. I forgot you had that old codger.”

  Grant laughed, a genuine laugh now. “We’re all criminals now, in one sense or another. Yeah, I was arraigned and clapped in irons before joining.” Grant sounded relieved to admit that finally, coming to terms with the concept after so long. “I had done some shit I’m not proud of when I was younger.” Grant sighed deeply, finally admitting his sin. “I caused someone to die, and the priests couldn’t revive them.”

  Willis nodded, sitting carefully next to the murderer. “Caused?”

  Grant nodded. “Caused.” He adjusted himself again, as if the admission sat wrong in his side. “Manslaughter.” Grant fought with the words, the concept still sore after so long and after such contradiction. “I started a fire that lead to someone’s death.” Grant locked eyes with the firepit, as if he was reliving it. “I knocked over a lantern and it caused a building fire. There was someone inside at the time. I was so afraid then. I panicked and ran. Someone saw me and that’s how I became the man you see today.”

  Willis sat, he didn’t sneer, or accuse, or judge, he sat.

  Grant sat in silence next to him.

  The fire crackled, then shifted as the logs burned. Warmth leaching through their clothes and into their bones. Grant felt the heat, now and back then. This time the heat on the front of his body was more comforting than the heat he felt on his back.

  “Who saw you?” Willis asked.

  Grant smirked and shook his head of the awful thought. “At the time I didn’t know, but after two years in I got my answer.” Grant took the cork and placed it back into the open bottle of whisky and handed it to Willis. “My best friend at the time, Adam.”

  Willis gently took the bottle and uncorked it, serving himself another shot.

  “What does the sky look like to you?” Grant wondered.

  Willis sat back and looked into the sky, evaluating it for the first time it felt like. “Everything’s… tan. And the sky is grey.”

  Grant nodded.

  The moment stretched once again, quietly they sat observing the sky.

  Willis sat up lilting to the side, then correcting himself. “Goodnight Grant.” He said quietly, and walked off to manage the prisoners.

  Grant stood a moment later and walked off to the tree line. There he found his tent and crawled into it, and into his cot thereafter. He slipped into it with a monumental effort made easy through catharsis. It took a few minutes of effort to get into his sleeping uniform, but once he had sleep was not long behind. His body was wrecked, but the weight of work lifted off his shoulders. Grant turned in his cot and for once found sleep quickly.

  His dream haunted him, warmth, heat, blooming heat. His senses tickled at the feeling of being lost in a fire. Bright red flames smearing his vision as he turned about in the tumult of the burning building. The creaking of the burning beams overhead screamed in agony as he stood there. This wasn’t home, this was war. He swung his staff around, pistol weighing down his hip. Clearing a home with a long weapon was dangerous, but that danger was balanced with the hope to retrieve and save the civilian inside here. Grant pulled a door off of its hinges, and was consumed in a rolling ball of fire. He let it sear him only in the way that he couldn’t dodge the radiant heat. His senses allowed him to move faster than natural phenomenon. The ball of flame hit the ceiling and rolled across the room as if it were alive. It was like looking at the surface of cursed water. Roiling and bubbling with intense chaos.

  He shifted his attention back into the blazing room. It was completely engulfed, and he could sense his body starting to break down. Soon it wouldn’t matter if he could shut off pain, if you were cooked alive it wouldn’t matter. He saw a closed closet and jumped the distance of the room with a powerful kick of his legs. The door came off in splinters and he took another sip of fuel from the belching black fuel canister in his back pocket. Color leached out of the room in black, red, and orange. The intense fire baking everything in a monochrome wash that diminished everything inside. There, amidst all of the burning chaos, he saw the first real color. A bright azure blue blanket that someone had swaddled up into to avoid the heat. He lurched over and picked up the frightened child inside.

  A twig snapped. His eyes opened. The silence of the night interrupted in a natural way, in a way Grant disliked. His hands found his staff and held it close. Pitch black, save the looming bright white of the radiant ring in the sky. He strained his ears in the pitch darkness, waiting, listening. Raw potential lurked there in the night. His mind waiting to hear something to make sense there in the cot.

  Leaves rustled in the deep forest, not a single swish, it was two deep ones in a cadence. Grant sat up immediately, knowing that either the camp was making a run, or that something was lurking in the forest. His hands quickly secured two major items. First, His belt, then his boots. His hands flew over a roll of rope he pulled up at night to protect himself, and threw it over the drop. He slid down and saw the camp at idle, fire still burning. His expert eye flew over the tents one by one, most of them still showing signs of men inhabiting them. One was empty, and Willis wasn’t around.

  Perhaps they went to relieve themselves with Willis’ aid.

  He surged forward, towards the center of camp. He looked around and felt foolish for rushing out here so suddenly.

  Again he head two deep cadent footsteps off in the deep woods, punching holes into the ground. Grant turned to where he heard the noise. His eyes searched the edge of the clearing, his hands on his staff in a defensive posture. Damn chain gang duty. He couldn’t take his eyes off the prisoners or the forest before him.

  An eerie silence stretched out as he waited for more footsteps, more sound to roll from the forest around him. Somehow even the river was silent tonight. He flicked his eye back and saw it was dead still.

  Wrongness.

  He flicked his eyes back and kept them glued on the tree line. Left, to right, they quickly absorbed the land around him. Then he heard footsteps again, this time shallower and with a consistent rigid cadence to them. Three pairs of feet marching in the distance. More than likely it was Willis and the prisoners from the empty tent.

  Grant remained standing at full guard, keeping his staff high ready and in a defensive posture. His eyes switched along the black stands of trees and the approach of the clearing further out. There were several ways to sneak up on him now, and it wouldn’t be hard to snatch his life at this point. He waited, listening to the men returning. Their footsteps getting louder until he saw them entering the clearing from the front. Willis was so predictable, in a good way. Grant let his shoulders lax as he saw the three men.

  Willis looked annoyed as they made eye contact. “See what you did? You woke the foreman.” Willis took the butt of his rifle and prodded Elro in the side.

  “Fields-!” He clutched his rib and looked up at Grant. “S-sorry-“

  Grant sneered and glared at Willis. “What’s the nature of this? Why is he out and about?”

  Willis sighed and allowed Elro to explain.

  “We needed to relieve ourselves, I ain’t no spring scabhen no more.” Elro straightened his outfit, covered in what looked like dirt.

  Caleb, who was chained to Elro, nodded. “You ought to know, being old y’self.”

  Grant lifted his hand to rub the bridge of his nose. “Be quiet next time.” He said, thankful there wasn’t anything untoward going on. “Back to bed.” Grant turned and looked back at the clearing. Something still wasn’t adding up.

  Willis escorted the two men out and back to their tents before returning.

  “What’re we doing tomorrow? Aside from sending a runner.” Willis sat down on a log, sobered up now.

  “We let them have a genuine rest. Let them sleep in tomorrow. I’ve already sent for them to come and pick us up via riverboat.” Grant found a log and sat too, his joints creaking.

  Willis looked uncertain. “How’d you do that?”

  Grant raised an eyebrow. “We have these little devices.” Pulling a small token from his shirt. “It’s a simple little trinket, burn some fuel here and its twin chimes. It usually only chimes though. But we used it to great affect in the scouts.” His hand revealed the brass device, intricate linework scrawled across it in fine patterns. “We learned that you just need to touch something hot to it, and it transmits the signal reliably. So we decided a means of speaking through them. Long chimes and short chimes.” He took a piece of iron and place it to the device and performed a series of holds and taps. ‘Hold. Tap. Tap, tap, tap. Hold.’ Grant waited, quietly, patiently, waited. Nothing returned. Grant looked down at the device and sighed. “No operators.”

  Willis blinked then looked around. “Go back to bed.” He sighed deeply and turned to finish his shift.

  Grant sighed, the distraction from the recent scare was nice. He looked up as he tossed the iron back into the pit. His hands had just finished stashing the token when they hardened and registered a looming shape in the dark stand of trees. He froze.

  “Willis.” Grant said in a much more serious tone.

  Willis froze, processing the shift instantly. “What, Grant?”

  “We’re not alone.” He said in a quieter voice.

  Willis stood there, frozen. “What do you see?”

  Grant squinted, looking at the lurking thing off in the distance. “I cant see it well. Get the prisoners up and ready, we cant let them sneak up on us.”

  Willis bolted and started waking the men. Leaving Grant to himself. He heard the clattering and freeing of hands, too rushed to properly free them. He heard hushed voices and agreement as Willis brought the camp to speed on the situation. Time slurred as they moved into a more defensible state. The late night carefully looming over them as the large, framed things lurked in the woods. He took the token and threw it into the fire, the chime picked up in pitch like nails on a chalkboard. Alerting the inside of the camp to its pitched squeal.

  Grant moved forward, attempting to buy time for the vulnerable prisoners behind him. He started to twirl the staff, gaining clumsy momentum. His head started to hurt, his body reacted slowly to the demands he was making of it. “Damn hangover.” He regretted not hydrating before bed.

  Something large slunk into the dark stand of trees, just inside of view. He heard the loud punching cadence again, as if it had dropped down from the trees and landing onto the ground.

  He could see it a little more clearly now. Its silhouette was broken and savage from what Grant could see. Tall. Imposing. Horrendous. Its form was a thick bundled cordage of root mass perforated by large green spikes that stood out in the moonlight. It moved in a slow, glacial, gait. Grant noticed that these things could have been following for any length of time, considering how slow they’re moving. These things only would have been able to catch up when the group made camp for extraction.

  Grant kept twirling the staff, keeping his eyes focused but alert. They scanned the black horizon around them. The sounds of the men in the tents finally rose to a pitch that matched the token’s chime. Clattering free prisoners with tools and intent. A screeching chime alerting home of an attack, or at the least the chime was in the fire and out of Grant’s hands. An angry pair of hungover army men hellbent on achieving their task. The camp breathed into life as the threat personified itself, stepping out of the pure dark of the forest. In the moonlight things were clearer, it was a Green Warden.

  Grant nodded at the advance of the creatures, clearly in a mode to conserve energy. It didn’t fool him however. He’d seen these things in battle prior. Another lumbering beast stepped out to the left, and then the right of the first. Three total. The monsters kept their terrifyingly slow gait, marching up the rampart that sprawled out before the group of men. Willis strode shoulder to shoulder with Grant. Then the unchained prisoners along side them both.

  Grant looked puzzled, how did they not decide to turn and flee on them now?

  Willis kept his eyes on the Wardens approaching them. “They’re dead either way if we die here.” Willis pulled out a felling axe, knowing the rifle he had would be ineffective on these things. “You ever fight druids before?”

  Grant nodded. “Too many times.” The air suddenly displaced as Grant vanished into pure violence of action.