Butch the Wereboar

Butch and Sable burst onto the western road as the city bells begin their alarm. Cold rolls over the dirt like a living thing, and the trees ahead cast no matching shadows.

The darkness peels up from the ground and gathers into a low wall across the road. In its surface, broken shapes flicker, like faces pressed behind smoke.

Behind them, the western gate groans shut with a final clang. Ahead, the blockade tightens, and one thin seam of pale light shows through the dark, like a hidden path under the shadow's skin.

The answer hangs in the cold air, plain as a blade. Whoever sold Butch's trail is feeding his hunt, and the shadow has found the road to the same buyers.

The shadow wall pulses with a rhythmic, hungry malice that rejects any notion of guidance or aid. It is a predatory barrier, and it does not intend to let them pass.

Butch drops his head and drives forward. The shadow wall gives way like torn cloth, its clawed ridges bursting outward in a spray of cold dark vapor.

He punches through the center of it and keeps moving, shoulders clearing the last of the black mass as the barrier splits wide behind him.

The Sentry stumbles back from the gate, staring at the torn opening and the way the shadow recoils around Butch instead of him.

On the far side, the road opens into open air and broken moonlight, but the shadow still clings to the edges of the breach, twitching as if it has tasted him.

Sable closes in beside him, shield up, while the dark wall ripples and shows a second pulse deeper inside, as though something farther off has noticed the break.