*“It’s a little quiet around here, isn’t it, Mother?” Lia asked me, her voice barely above a whisper. Looking around, I realised that she was right. We had been travelling back towards Apple Gate Farm throughout the night and now, we were in the area of town closest to the farm, an area we had fought quite a few times in. It was almost time for us to look for shelter, the slowly advancing summer was shortening the nights more and more, but there was something weird about our surroundings. Or rather, there was a distinct lack of something that made our surroundings weird, namely, there were no enemies to be found. No Withered creeping around, not that I’d have expected any to be in this area, but also no Shattered or even mindless Undead. Just, quiet streets, the silence so pervasive that it gave me shivers.

“Let’s be cautious, there might be enemies nearby. They might be lurking, just like we are,” I whispered back, pulling the shadows even closer around us than normal, to the point that we turned into little more than shadows in the darkness. Without light, nothing would find us.

Moving onwards, I noticed a strange flicker, light that didn’t belong. Given that the only enemies actively using light were the few Scorched I had come across, we moved even deeper into the darkness, careful that their light couldn’t dispel the shadows we used to hide in. By now, I wasn’t confident that I knew what the Scorched could actually do, whether they had gained some sort of illuminating flames that might drive away the darkness inherent to my concealment, or maybe some other tricks that could uncover us. Getting caught by a sufficiently powerful Scorched could leave us singed, or worse.

“Over there,” Lia quietly warned me, pointing towards one of the buildings. One of the second-story windows was lit from within, the flickering light I had noticed escaping from there. Wondering why a Scorched might lurk in an abandoned, but mostly intact, building, I started to move towards it, gesturing for Lia to follow along.

If the Withered started to form a strange society, who was to say that the Shattered and Scorched didn’t do something similar, only instead of using what once was a public park, this society might use the ruins of our old world.

As we closed in on the building, I noticed an open door at ground level, allowing us easy entry into the structure. No need to try climbing up to the window, if we could just use the stairs, like the creatures inside likely had.

Just before we reached the door, Silva let out a growl, not one of aggression or warning, but a more friendly one. It reminded me of the greetings she exchanged with the other dogs when we came back from our excursions. In addition, her tail was slowly wagging back and forth, without any sign of aggression in sight.

“Are there people inside, instead of Scorched?” I asked Silva, realising that it wasn’t just Scorched who might use fire, but that people could, too. It was quite possible that other survivors had taken shelter here, with the light being used to keep watch or for some other reason. When Silva continued to wag her tail, just speeding up a little, and let out a soft huff of affirmation, I called out, not loud enough to wake people but loud enough to get the attention of any guard who might be sufficiently vigilant.

“Hail the house!” For a few seconds, nothing happened, until I heard some shuffling inside, and moments later, a head appeared in the open window.

“Who’s there?” came a slurred question, the person asking clearly not fully awake. Sloppy, if that was supposed to be a guard. Looking up, I tried to place the person but couldn’t be sure. The backlighting didn’t do my night vision any favours, but I was somewhat convinced that I had seen them before.

“Just travellers, moving through the night. You lot from the Farm?” I asked, trying to figure out how a social situation like this was supposed to go. What were the societal expectations, other than to remain quiet enough so nobody was unnecessarily woken up? Should I just enter, in hopes to get some pertinent information, or would it be better to wait for an invitation?

Now, the face was looking down, swivelling around as if looking for something. It took me a second to realise that while I had mostly broken the Wind-Aspect of my customary concealment by calling out, the four of us were still tightly wrapped in Shadows, making it nearly impossible to see us, especially without holding their light source out of the window.

With nary a thought, I let the concealment fade away and the face snapped into our direction a few moments later, briefly focusing on Silva, then on Lia until it finally stopped on me.

“You’re that Witch, aren’t you? Morgana, or something like that?” the guy asked, sounding a little more awake and just a tad intimidated.

“Sorceress, if you want to be precise, and the name is Jade Morgana, yes,” I let out a soft sigh, “Regardless, I wanted to know if you are from the Farm. Or rather, I’m curious why you lot are camping out here, we planned to get to the farm but it looks like we won’t make it till tomorrow, not with the Sun coming up soon.”

“Come on in, that way we can talk,” he invited us after a moment of hesitation. I was curious why he had but wasn’t about to ask. The guy was acting weird and uncertain enough as it was.

Together, the four of us moved in, just a little appalled at the lack of security these people had set up. There was no trap in sight, no tripwires to alarm those inside of people sneaking in, nothing. It was almost criminally negligent, especially with how easy some of the simpler solutions were, just a few shattered bottles could act as impromptu caltrops, and if one added a hand of change on top of them, it even served as a simple alarm. But no, there was nothing here that would stop a Withered Skulker from moving in on the sleeping people and turning them into Husks.

To make matters worse, I realised that the single guard wasn’t even set in a way to block the path between the stairs, the logical point of intrusion, and the people sleeping here. Nor were the sleeping people concentrated in one space, they were split up as if they were asking for some nefarious force to take advantage, at least if I judged the snoring sounds correctly. Shaking my head, I made a quick mental note to tell Mrs Wu about this, she’d tan their hides. Or maybe I would demonstrate the consequences of their lax actions at some point, I might be able to put some decently dark nightmares together for them, just so they feel what a mess they made of their security.

To find the guard we had talked to from outside, we only had to follow the light. It was roughly what I had expected, a simple torch set between a couple of bricks, making it so people could look outside without it completely blinding them but the set-up was far from perfect.

“You’re in luck, Mark’s got the next watch. I’ll just wake him up and you can talk to him,” the guard told me, nodding to himself as if it was the perfect solution. Maybe it was, the guy seemed to have as much of an idea of how to proceed from here as I had, which is to say, none. “Sit down, make yourself comfortable, keep an eye out for zombies, whatever floats your boat. I’ll be waking the boss-man,” he added, before simply walking away. This truly was where operational security went to die, or maybe it had died long ago, to the point that these people had never heard of it. Or maybe I was being a little too critical, it wasn’t like a Shattered would calmly walk in here, nor were their eyes easy to miss.

Whatever the case, about five minutes after the guard, whose name I still didn’t know, left, Mark, the guy who had essentially led the fighting forces of Apple Gate Farm before they joined together with the rest of the survivors came walking in, looking tired.

“Jade, good morning. Want to tell me what brings you by to our outpost? We’ve managed to push the Undead back quite a bit, to the point that we can actually rest here, without them coming to wake us in the night,” he proudly greeted me and I had to give it to them, I hadn’t expected them to manage this much. Granted, I didn’t know enough about the behaviour of the Undead to make a sound judgement, but I had experienced how much effort the Undead put into killing off people.

“Good Morning Mark,” I returned the greeting, “It’s a good thing to see you, though sadly, I’m afraid you won’t share the sentiment. Do you remember what I told the council about the Withered?” For a moment, he looked taken aback before nodding, the expression on his face wondering why he likely heard the sound of a falling shoe, somewhere deep in his mind. Well, I sadly had to let the other shoe drop, so it might just be for the best.

“There’s more…” I began, before letting myself fall into a description of the trouble we had uncovered.