The wind wefted its way down the mountain, driving faint flurries of snow from the peak, moaning over caverns and clefts, howling between gnarled pines that hadn't seen a human form in a thousand years, down, down, down, until it raced past a man.

  The wind tore at clothes that were alien to this world. Dark shorts. A hooded jacket zipped almost all the way up, disguising a chest that was still heaving. Strange running shoes with slots for toes.

  And long dark hair that covered his head and ran down into a beard that was as unkempt as the landscape that spread out before him.

  Piercing blue eyes gazed out over a forest of rock and tree, descending sharply into darkness as the mountain's peak drowned the slopes in its shadow.

  The man stared for a while, and then looked up to the sky above, finding a slowly setting sun and the hint of more than one moon beginning to rise.

  His mouth opened, and a gravelly voice spoke the first words that this section of wilderness had likely heard in living memory.

  “What the fuck?”

  —

  Ollie descended with careful steps, eyes adjusting to the dim light, pulling his hood down to get a better look at the surrounding terrain that was nothing like the North London park he’d been running through a minute ago.

  All around was deserted. Bleak.

  What little of the ground that wasn’t covered by bare rock or thin dirt was littered with fallen needles (again, nothing like the type you’d find in a London park) and moss.

  Nothing stirred, beyond the branches of the trees above.

  The wind came in gusts and spurts, seeming stronger every time he approached the edge of a large rock to climb down, as if seeking to dislodge him.

  Over the next few minutes he picked up a handful of scratches and scrapes as stone and scattered brambles tore at his skin, but they were insignificant enough to dismiss as his eyes searched the surroundings for any hint as to what was going on.

  “Hello?”

  Nothing responded but the howling of the wind.

  He pulled a phone out of his pocket and glanced at the screen.

  No signal. No data.

  How long had he been here? Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes?

  A shiver ran up his spine. More from the desolation than any real chill. In fact, he wasn’t cold at all, despite the freshness of the breeze. Wherever he was, it was still summer.

  With no better options or signs to suggest otherwise, he continued downwards, hands clutching trunks and low branches when the terrain grew too steep, leaning back to scoot down on his rear when the vegetation grew sparse, brushing himself off every time he stood up.

  He called out every few minutes, pushing questions about what was happening to the back of his mind.

  Nothing responded.

  Twice he thought he saw something moving off to the side - a shadow - but after scrambling around to see both times he was greeted by the same empty mountainside.

  That made him more nervous than anything. More than the coming night. More than his lack of food and water and shelter. More than finding himself in an unknown place.

  Where were the animals? The birds? Where was the buzz and chittering of insects?

  Straining eyes saw nothing but trees and bramble. Staining ears caught only the howling wind.

  A minute later, something changed.

  It took him long seconds to realise what it was.

  The wind had died down...

  …but the howling had not.

  —

  Ollie wasn’t the sort of person to get involved in another’s business. He was a Londoner for god’s sake. When you didn’t even lift your eyes to meet someone’s gaze on the tube, you definitely weren’t interested in seeking out the source of…public displays of emotion.

  Arguments. Fights. Accidents.

  It was bad enough having to put up with it from students.

  But the howling…

  It spoke of pain. Pain and rage. And despair. He didn’t know what was making the noise, but it reeked of danger.

  He hesitated.

  Then he started running.

  The sound grew louder as he scrambled round the mountainside. He might not know where he was, or what was going on, or what lay ahead, but something in his life had changed in the last half hour. Dramatically so. He made a choice: if he was going to deal with whatever his new situation was - whatever was to come - he was going to change with it. It was like he told each class at the beginning and end of the school year, whether they left for higher education or not:

  When you arrive in a new place, you’re given the chance to reinvent yourself - to shed what you don’t like and embrace what you desire. Seize that chance, and become the person you’ve always longed to be.

  In his old life, it had been all too easy to ignore the bad things. The awkward situations. To walk by as a tourist was struggling to work out if they needed the Picadilly or the Bakerloo line, or to ignore a parent screaming at their child. To leave the cereal boxes that had been knocked down for the weary shop assistant to restack. To pass someone wrestling with an unwieldy suitcase at the bottom of a set of stairs because you were in a rush and needed to make a connection.

  Deep down inside though, he’d always admired the type of person who stopped and helped, or who spoke out when they spotted something that wasn’t right. And in this strange place, when the first sign of life he’d encountered came with its own warning, he made the decision to step up.

  His heart beat faster than his feet fell as the howling grew louder, wordless yells interspersed whenever there was the slightest break. In the shadow of the mountain he dodged round trees and picked his way as fast as he dared over rocky terrain, eventually scaling the rear of a large outcropping that surely was the last thing to stand between him and the source of the noise.

  Light was flickering as he pulled himself over the top, chest heaving. He stood on uneven stone a dozen yards back from where the edge of the outcrop dropped off. A few withered trees and bushes clung to life.

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  Whatever was making the noise was below.

  He might have resolved to change, but Ollie wasn’t suddenly an entirely different person. He wasn’t an idiot, and he wasn’t about to throw himself into danger without knowing what was there.

  Leaning forwards, he crept closer to the edge. For a second he considered dropping to his belly and crawling, but thought better of it. He’d be able to react faster if he kept on his toes. Besides, there was no need to get dirt and pine needles all over his jacket.

  He inched forward until he caught sight of something in the firelight below.

  Not a campfire. Torches. Old-fashioned burning torches.

  The light dazzled him for a moment, but after the half second it took for him to adjust to the sudden illumination, he froze.

  That’s…they’re…

  “hey”

  Ollie almost leapt over the edge in fright as the whispered voice came from behind.

  He spun, fists clenching, arms rising as though he had the faintest idea of how to box.

  Shit, where did that come from?

  There was barely anywhere for someone to hide up here, but staring at the torches had ruined his vision. Left spots in his eyes. It took another whispered call, barely audible over the ruckus below, to focus his attention on a shrub at the end of a fallen tree.

  Taking a cautious step forwards, fists still raised, he tried to make out who had spoken.

  “get down you idiot - are you trying to get killed?”

  He crouched lower as he shuffled towards the bush, trying to remember how boxers and fencers moved in books. He circled round, keeping a good few yards between him and whoever was speaking.

  “Show yourself.”

  “no. get down behind here and shut up before one of them climbs up here and they spot you.”

  A head with bits of twigs sticking out popped up from behind the bush and a hand urgently beckoned him over. It was thin. Feminine, like the voice, he realised as his brain began to catch up with everything that he was trying to process. Whoever was hiding there wasn’t large, and was clearly scared.

  She’s unlikely to be a threat. Not like…

  He made up his mind and hurried to duck down behind the meagre shelter, trusting more to the elevation of the outcropping to keep them hidden.

  The moment he jumped behind the bush he got another shock.

  They’re…not twigs?

  He’d thought the woman was trying to camouflage herself. Some sort of homemade ghillie suit. But…

  “You’re a… centaur?”

  The woman wasn’t a woman at all. Or rather, she looked feminine, but she wasn’t human. Her face was. Almost. Heart shaped, fair skin, long brown hair, a few freckles…but then there were antlers. Not to mention the humanoid torso which melded with the body of… what… not a horse.

  A deer?

  His mind tried to connect what he was seeing with knowledge gained from thirty years of avid reading combined with a decade in teaching as her face silently shifted from fear to outrage.

  “certainly not. do I look like some sort of brute to you?”

  “No. Sorry - you’re a… a…”

  What the hell were they called again?

  “a cervitaur, thank you very much.”

  A part of Ollie’s brain registered the absurdity of crouching behind a bush in an unknown land, being admonished by a creature that didn’t exist, whilst hiding from another kind of being pulled straight out of a fairytale, even ignoring the howling that was still filling the air. Another part of his brain - the more dominant British part - took over automatically.

  “Terribly sorry. My mistake. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  She reached out and pulled him down lower behind the bush, shuffling back on hooved feet behind the fallen tree to make space.

  “it’s fine. just keep your head down and keep quiet.”

  For a few seconds whilst he continued to process, he did just that, but then, as he wiggled in place and the absurdity of it all came crashing down, he had to ask…

  “...are those goblins down there? What’s going on?”

  The cervitaur glared at him, mouth working as though debating whether or not to answer.

  “goblins yes. a nasty bunch. they’re after the silvermanes that live in the cave underneath us.”

  It was then that Ollie realised the cracks he’d been hearing weren’t from the fires, but from whips, and the howls were far too bestial to be from human throats.

  Unless they were Scousers maybe...

  He shook his head, this was all too bizarre. Unreal.

  “What do they want the…Silvermanes for?”

  Frustration warred with fear for a moment before the cervitaur answered.

  “they’ll kill some for meat and fur, and take the smaller ones to break in as mounts, or hunting beasts perhaps. it’s going to get a lot more dangerous out this way. i knew I shouldn’t have risked it for the mushrooms, bu- hey, where are you going?”

  Ollie was creeping out from behind the cover and approaching the lip of the outcrop once again, and this time, he did drop down to crawl to the edge. He ignored the urgent whispers from behind, but he did shuffle to the side; he didn’t want anything below to see his head peeking out over the apex of the cave.

  It took the best part of a minute, moving slowly enough to be quiet and letting his eyes adjust to the light of half a dozen burning torches, but he soon saw a gristly scene below.

  At least thirty goblins - scrawny green-skinned creatures barely five feet tall with harsh features and nasty grins - were gathered around the cave entrance, hemming in a family of wolves, though he was fairly sure normal wolves weren’t so large. The biggest was six feet at the shoulder and more than ten feet long.

  Are they dire wolves? Why not, if cervitaurs and goblins exist…

  Some part of him wondered if he was in a drug-fuelled hallucination, or in a coma and dreaming, but it felt so real, and on some level, he realised it didn’t matter.

  There had been more than a dozen wolves at the start, though five were barely pups, and all but one of those were trussed up behind the goblins. Two juveniles lay dead on the ground, beginning to be dragged off and, as he watched, a third gave a yelp as an arrow pierced its shoulder and a noose settled around its neck.

  The greenskins were harassing the largest beast with long spears and whips, keeping the six that remained back through sheer weight of numbers, corralling them to the far side of the cavern entrance where a fold in the rock wall gave them a chance to pin the creatures in.

  They hadn’t had it all their own way though; a handful of green corpses littered the entryway. It was difficult to work out quite how many when they’d been torn limb from limb.

  A larger goblin at the back of the group barked out orders over the fading howls, and a particularly wiry one sprinted into the cave as the warriors lunged forwards to force the wolves back against the wall.

  The largest Silvermane went wild, snarling and spinning, bounding off the cliff face to try and break out, swiping at the spear hafts. Its jaws snapped down on one and with a twist of its head it sent the goblin holding it smashing into the rocky floor before it could let go.

  It didn’t get up from that.

  The move had cost the wolf though, as half a dozen spears lanced into its side, and it let loose a howl of pain once more as it slumped to the ground.

  One of the full-grown wolves darted forward to come to its assistance and another goblin lost a limb, falling back clutching at where its arm used to be, but the wolf itself was sent reeling as a pair of arrows thudded into its chest.

  In the chaos, a pair of goblins to the side managed to jump forwards and toss a net over one of the smaller adults, and in a trice five or six pairs of green, grasping hands were dragging it out, alive and yelping as it struggled against the cruel fibres.

  Then the goblin that had run into the cave came sprinting out, each hand grasping a pup by the scruff of the neck.

  It screeched in a chittering tongue to the one in charge, and a cheer went up from the greenskins.

  Waving an arm off towards the darkness, the leader of the group snarled to its underlings, and half of them began to break off, the ones who weren’t carrying torches dragging the trussed-up pups and the two larger wolves they’d managed to net and noose. There were another two adults that Tirrin hadn’t even noticed until the goblins began dragging them too - presumably long-since knocked out given the amount of rope they were tied up with.

  The last to go shouldered the dead wolves between them, leaving a dozen warriors with spears and a trio of archers to finish off the last four wounded wolves.

  Ollie watched the greenskins leave. The remaining goblins didn’t seem worried, but they didn’t seem keen to rush in to finish the beasts they’d cornered, despite the red that stained the Silvermanes. They’d got what they came for, and the ones that stayed looked like they wanted to have some sport with the remainder of the pack.

  A wall of spears kept the wolves penned in, and the archers, poor though their aim was, were happy to take pot shots.

  It wasn’t until the wolves began pressing low to the rocks to avoid the arrows, and one of the archers began to scale the outcropping for a better shot, that Ollie realised that he was actually watching it all happen.

  He shook himself as if waking from a dream.

  It wouldn’t take the goblin more than ten seconds to reach the top with the ease it was climbing, and as soon as it did it’d only need to look to its right to see Ollie lying on his stomach.

  He rolled away from the edge and scurried to the fallen tree where the cervitaur was having a minor heart attack.

  She opened her mouth to berate his recklessness but he held a finger to his lips and thanked whatever gods might be listening that the meaning translated.

  Her eyes widened as the goblin archer’s arms appeared and it hauled itself over the rim, standing and pulling an arrow from its quiver before hissing and loping along the edge to try and get a better angle on the wolves below. It laughed as it loosed an arrow and a howl of pain came from below.

  Ollie tracked the creature with his eyes, until he felt a hand on his arm and looked down to see the cervitaur, eyes wide with terror, shaking her head.

  He followed her gaze as she pointedly stared at where his hands were grasping a thick branch, and he realised that, subconsciously, he’d already made up his mind.

  With an apologetic look, he shrugged, and, tightening his grip, wrenched the branch off with a snap.

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