Speaker 1: Around five years ago, I started gravitating towards jobs that
made solitude a requirement instead of a consequence. Just after
finally accepting that I was an introvert, I tried wild
life surveys, a forestry internship, and even worked private fire
mitigation one summer before this gig found me. It's how
I ended up at my post on the Northern Edge
Tower nine. The government or whoever owned this place referred
to it as a conservation perimeter or some other empty phrasing.
What it really was, though, was a swath of wilderness,
too big and too wild for anyone to trust leaving alone.
The acreage stretched far enough to swallow towns Hall. Thirteen
fire towers covered the zone. Thirteen watchers, if you counted
us all. They called us rangers, though it was more
about fire prevention than policing hikers or keeping bears away
from trailheads. Most rangers keep to their towers, but some
of us made a habit of breaking the rules we
decided were pointless. Technically, we weren't supposed to leave our
posts without clearance, especially during the dry season, but out here,
miles from the nearest supervisor, the rules didn't mean much.
Logan worked out in Tower seven, which sat a good
few miles east, and he didn't talk much about where
he came from. He gnored through most of the conversation,
say something dry under his breath, then go quiet again.
But he was solid. We didn't hang out often, but
sometimes we'd meet half way between towers, trade supplies, pass
a flask, and sit in silence. I liked that about him,
but not everyone was like Logan. Ezekiel worked out of
Tarer eight, the closest one to me, and he'd been
there longer than anyone. Every ranger I asked gave me
a different answer about how long it'd been around. Some
said five years, others said twenty. I knew only this.
He never left. Those were the only two towers that
were within reasonable trekking distance. The other towers sat so
far away the only interactions I ever got with them
was through the radio. Winter rotation was optional. Most of
us rotated out during the snow season tuk breaks, went
home let the off season crew handle things. But Ezekiel
stayed through all of it, year after year. Supposedly he'd
signed some agreement with the agency to maintain permanent watch.
I'd only spoken to him twice. Both times were uncomfortable.
The first time I passed him on the ridge while
heading toward Tower six, I didn't say anything to him,
and I felt bad about it, But Logan had told
me so much creepy stuff about Ezekiel that I almost
didn't even want to speak to him. He didn't say
anything either until I was nearly past and asked me
if i'd seen anything strange on my way. I said
I hadn't. Then he just looked away and seemed to
be focused on something else entirely already. He wasn't warm,
far from it, and I didn't really like spending too
much time around him. My first winter in the tower
wasn't forced on me. I asked for it. The agency
gave me a pay cut, and in short I understood
the response time would be a joke if anything went wrong,
but I signed off anyway. I was starting to I
really liked this job. One Slogan cleared out, the ridge
went dead quiet, his tower light stopped flickering across the
tree line. In the evenings that left me and Ezekiel,
I didn't think about it much. I just focused on
the scenery. The forest itself had no straight edges. It
was hills and valleys stitched together by frozen creeks. Snow
blanketed the evergreens early that year. Most of the smaller
trees had dropped their leaves already, and the taller one
stood out black against the white. Wind carved up the
snow into low spines that looked like frozen wakes, as
if something had swung through the powder and disappeared. I
was out near the edge of my patrol line when
I saw it. The light had shifted into that flat
winter amber that shadows long and deceptive. I'd been inspecting
some of the brush piles left behind by the firebreak cruise.
The wind was quiet and the trees barely moved. Then
a break in the whiteness. It was too far off
to see clearly, but it looked like a large deer limping.
I don't mean walking unevenly, I mean dragging itself forward
in slow, holding burst, like one of its legs didn't
want to follow. My first instinct was the stayput. We're
told not to interfere with wild life. If an animal dies,
it dies, we aren't rescue. But I hadn't been out
here long enough to be numb about animals suffering. I
stood there for a minute, staring across the slope. The
sky overhead was clear, visibility wasn't bad. I could see
the shapes of the tree for a few hundred yards
before they disappeared behind a ridge. The animal had crossed
into a shallow trench and left the trail behind it,
a broken red line bleeding into the snow. I figured
I could follow it for a bit and see if
I could help us somehow. I wasn't even sure how,
but I knew it did stare my mind. If not,
I could at least make sure I didn't go down
in some ditch where nothing would find it until spring.
I checked my belt, my radio was on, my coat
was zipped tight. I still had enough daylight to get
back if I moved quick. I started walking. The snow
had only started falling the night before, so it was
easy to see the fresh marks for the tracks were off.
I've seen Dear Prince plenty of times, and these didn't match.
They were larger, for one thing, and they weren't symmetrical.
The spacing between them seemed wrong, longer than a deer
should have been able to manage with a limp. I
stopped to examine them, several times, crouching down to touch
the edges. Some of them looked melted around the sides,
as if the heat had softened the snow when they formed.
An injury, maybe a birth defect. I kept moving forward.
The blood trail dipped into a shallow drainage basin where
the trees thinned out. I followed it between clumps of
dead brush and saplings half buried under snow drifts. The
wind began to shift while I walked. I felt it
before I heard it, sharp, low, funneling down the slope
like something alive. The clouds hadn't warned me. The sky
had stayed open and glassy above the tree tops, but
within seconds the snow came, driving in sideways, fine and fast.
The shift was absolute. One moment I could still see
the trees standing in soft ranks ahead of me. Then
without build up, they disappeared. Wind slammed through the trees
and pulled the temperature down so fast my fingers ate
through the gloves. I stopped walking, turned a slow circle.
Everything I'd used to orient myself, tree formations, ridge lines,
even the slope under my feet vanished beneath a layer
of rushing white I squinted through the sudden torrent. The
trail had disappeared so hard everything else. I looked behind me,
where my bootprints had been only second to go. There
was nothing the snow. I had sealed them up, as
if I'd never walked there at all. My first thoughts
was the find higher ground. I turned around and took
two steps, then stopped again. I couldn't see anything I recognized.
Even the sound of my own steps felt swallowed by
the wind. It wasn't that I couldn't tell which direction
I had come from. I had no idea which direction
anything was anymore. I reached for my radio and keyed
it Tower nine to anyone on frequency, come in nothing, repeat,
this is Tower nine. Whiteout conditions need triangulation or direction.
Assist anyone reading this silence. I lowered the radio. I
tried to listen past the storm to find some auditory
landmark that might give me a clue. Still, there was
an nothing except wind tearing across the snow and the
occasional snap of overburdened branches breaking underweight. I started walking again.
I kept my bearings tight, using small trees as markers,
and moving slowly, hoping to recognize some formation or shape
that would confirm I was looping back toward familiar territory.
I paused again and took a long breath. My breath
bugged up the inside of my hood. I adjusted the
draw string, tried to calm the pounding in my chest.
Getting lost out here wasn't new. Every ranger did it,
at least once. I kept walking. Minutes passed, I couldn't
tell how many. Then I saw something on the ground ahead.
It was the deer, or what had looked like one.
I approached slowly, expecting it to jolt up, the way
wounded deer sometimes do when you get too close. But
it stayed still, half buried in the snow, ribs rising
in a sharp curve. One hind leg twisted off to
the side at an unnatural angle. The closer I got,
the less it made sense. I stopped ten feet away
and stared. Its head was all wrong. At first glance,
it resembled a deer skull, long and narrow, with patches
of fur frozen stiff across it, But the face and
lips thin, cracked lips stretched back over teeth, almost human.
Its neck bent upward in a way no animal spine
should have allowed antlers or something like them, jotted out
in short knobs from either side of its skull, but
they had branching ends that looked almost sculted. Its torso
heaved slow and unsteady, and I realized it was still breathing.
I took one step back, then another. My boots sank
into the snow. I tried not to make noise. Its
eye turned toward me, singular, strikingly human, and its body convulsed.
A pause shot forward from beneath its torso. Not a hoof,
not a deer leg. A bear's limb, thick and matted
with fur, punched into the snow and dragged the rest
of the body forward As it rose. It stood half upright,
something between a man and a beast. Then it lunged.
I dropped my radio and fell sideways into the snow.
Its claws grazed the sleeve on my jacket, tearing the
fabric but missing the flesh. I rolled backward and kicked
at its ribs, but its weight bore down fast. It snarled,
wet breath blasted against my neck. The smell made me gag.
I noticed then a massive bleeding gash on its side. Quickly,
I grabbed a branch off the ground, snapping it from
the ice, I drove it into the thing's injury. It
made a deep choking noise and reeled back, landing hard.
I scrambled to my feet and ran. I pushed through
snow drift and tree trunks, branches tearing at my clothes,
breath heaving through my throat. My legs went numb from
the cold, but I didn't stop. I ran until my
lungs burned and the wind was a wall against my chest.
I didn't even realize where I was until I saw
the structure through the white, thin metal legs extended upward
into the mist, too straight to be natural. I recognized
the silhouette immediately a tower, Ezekiel's Tower. Somehow I had
looped west. I didn't waste time. I found the staircase
and started up, my boots barely gripping the ice slicked metal.
I knocked when I reached the top. No answer. I
knocked again, harder, this time nothing. I pushed the door open.
The warmth hit me first. A weak orange glow flickered
from an old stove in the corner. The windows were
covered in thick, mismatched curtains, blankets, and furs were piled
around the walls. I stepped inside and closed the door
behind me, my fingers trembling. I didn't realize how cold
i'd been until the hid my skin. Then I looked around.
I had never been inside his Equals tower. I didn't
know anyone who had. The space was packed with things
that didn't belong in a lockout. Wall to wall, hooks
and shelves cradled with weapons. Rifles lined the east wall.
Handguns rested in open crates. Ornamental carvings marked every one
of them. Runs letters I couldn't read, Lines and circles
scratched into the stalks and barrels. Several of the bullets
were laid out across the table under the window, their
surfaces glinting like silver or some other precious metal. Dream
catchers hung in the corners. Animal schools rested on ledges,
each of the forehead marked with the red wax or ink.
I packed away from the table and sank into a
low chair near the stove, trying to catch my breath.
My chest st ached. I leaned forward, resting my arms
on my knees. Then I heard the stairs creaking outside.
I immediately thought of that thing. My first thought was
that it had tracked me down, and now I had
nowhere to actually go. I raced toward the wall for
one of Ezekiel's guns when the door opened behind me
and Ezekiel stepped inside. His coat was dusted in snow,
his gloves were off. He shut the door and looked
over at me with no surprise. I looked at him, dumbfounded,
my hands resting on one of the rifles still attached
to the wall. Ah Yah, Ezekiel, you won't believe me,
but you saw it, he asked. I opened my mouth,
trying to explain, but he cut me off before I
could finish. Was it injured? I nodded, Good, means the
trap worked, he responded, after a brief silence. Well, he said,
at last, since he already saw it. He turned and
met my eyes. The corner of his mouth twitched in
what might have been a grimace. It can't be helped. Now.
He walked across the room with the slow certainty of
a man who knew where every board creaked. He moved
past the stove, past the table with a bullet, and
stopped in front of a tall shelf near the corner.
His hands hovered momentarily, then landed on a thick, water
warped book, bound in leather and marked in strange faded lettering.
He pulled it free, thumbed through the pages, and found
what he was looking for. I am sorry, though, he said,
locking up. I hadn't let one slip in in over
a decade. Maybe I am getting old. The pages made
a dry sound as he turned them. It's smart, Azekil, muttered,
eyes scanning the page, real smart. See. Some people think
it's three creatures sewn together. Somethink it's one thing splitting
apart into three. He turned the book toward me. The
illustration on the page looked too exact to be guesswork antlers,
human faces, claws from something simian or bare like. Its
body was sketched mid motion. He looked at the page,
then back at me. You're lucky it was wounded, would
have killed you otherwise. He snapped the book shot and
slid it under his arm. Then he crossed to another shelf.
His hands moved quickly, this time grabbing a flat, circular
object wrapped in cloth. He unwrapped it and held it
out to me. And looked like a mirror, but the
surface was darker than glass, more reflective than metal. The
edges were edgeless cymbals, and the reflection it gave back
felt delayed. Take it, he said. I didn't move. He
held it closer. You're coming with me. You know where
it was last. I need you to take me there.
I stared at the mirror, then at him. You think
I want company. I'd rather do this alone. One man
would have trouble taking it down. Two You should make
it manageable. He let go of the object. I caught it,
cradled the weight of it in both hands. You're part
of this now, whether you want to be or not.
After that, Ezekiel briefly explained the plan to me. I
was to be a distraction, since I held its scent
and it saw me as its prey. I was to
point the mirror toward it, leaving it frozen just long
enough for Ezekiel to take it out. Ezekiel put his
coat back on and grabbed a large tool where looked
to be a crossbow from the wall and motion for
me to move in front of him. I obeyed. The
snow had slowed, though only slightly, by the time we
set out, the wind still bit through the treetops, and
the sky hung low above us, dull and thick, but
it wasn't a full white out anymore. We moved downhill,
cutting through what was left of my trail. Ezekiel walked
with purpose, one hand gripped his crossbow, the other steadying
himself along exposed trunks and roots. He didn't speak much
except a nod when we hit the rain he recognized
from my descriptions. I stayed in front of him, scanning
every branch, every path of snow that looked uneven. I
wasn't sure if the thing had kept moving after it
attacked me. I wasn't even sure it could bleed out.
That was the problem. I didn't know anything about what
it was or how we were going to take it out.
We found the place after thirty minutes of trudging. It
wasn't far from the tower. I'd run further than I
realized during the panic. The snow in the clearing was
broken and stained, Dark veins crisscrossing through it in wild spirals.
Ezekiel moved to the center, crouched down, and studded the ground.
He shifted the snow gently brushing away the surface to
expose the soil beneath. I keet, thinking about whether I
could actually do this, whether I'd freeze if it showed
up again, whether he'd see it in my face. He
looked over his shoulder at me. Keep your eyes open.
It hit us without warning. One second we were standing
in silence, and the next the trees exploded into motion.
Snow burst upward as a massive form barreled out from
the gully to our right. Ezekiel spun, raising his weapon,
but the thing was faster. It slammed into him before
he could aim. The crossbow flew from his grip and
skid it into the trees. Ezekiel hit the ground hard.
I froze for a moment. The creature loomed over him.
It shake wwarping in place where muscle met hide, one
shoulder twitching as if it had too many limbs packed
into too little space. Its breathing was aggressive. It was angry,
hiss jaws stretched open as it stared at Ezekiel. Its
eyes were set wide across his head, mismatched in shape
and size. Ezekiel tried to reach for something at his belt,
but the beast slammed its elbow across his chest. I
heard something crack. I ran toward them and kicked hard
into the thing's exposed flank. My boot landed near the
wound i'd seen earlier. The creature shrieked and stumbled sideways.
I fell back and grabbed Ezekiel by the arm, but
he was too heavy to move. His legs didn't respond.
His mouth opened, but no sound came out. His hand
finally twitched and pointed towards the crosspo The creature's body
shifted as it rose, bones stretched, furst slowed off in clumps,
revealing muscle underneath that pulsed visibly. It looked at me,
then at Ezekiel. It growled a low noise that vibrated
in my chest. Move his ekil managed the painful shout.
I packed up, raised the mirror and held it in
both hands. I had forgotten I still had it until then.
The creature looked directly into it and stopped moving. Its
head tilted, its limbs slackened. The snarl faded from its face.
For a moment, it simply stood there, frozen. I lowered
the mirror and dove with the crossbow, my hand wrapped
around the grip fingers clumsy with adrenaline, I turned back
toward it and brought the weapon up. I hadn't fired
one in years. The trigger felt unfamiliar, the bolt was
already loaded. I aimed, then hesitated. I only had one chance,
and if I missed, it blinked and the spell broke.
The creature launched forward again, this time angling toward Ezekiel.
His hands went up weakly to defend himself. I quickly
inhaled and pulled the trigger. The bolt sank deep into
the creature's ribs. As it twisted mid motion. It shrieked
a horrible noise that shifted in pitch halfway through, as
if several voices were laid beneath it. Its body staggered,
then shimmered. The edges of it began to thin, stretching
outward like smoke caught in a reverse wind. It disappeared.
The clearing was silent again. I looked over as Egil
was slumped against the trunk, his coat soaked through with blood.
He gave a dry horse chuckle and shook his head
not bad. He coughed. It was at that moment that
I wondered if e Egil would ever need help, again
after all, he was getting old.