A crescent moon hung in the sky.
Bard had napped in the woods again.
Longer than he meant to.
He was finally almost home.
The sushi and steak had been hours ago now, and he was damn hungry.
He reached Valle Grande and followed his grass road.
There was fire.
His camper.
Bard stepped on the gas.
Then he noticed a man standing across the bridge near the camper, dressed in blood-red robes with a hood.
Somehow, jets of orange and blue flame were flying from his hands.
Dude was burning Bard’s house down.
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Bard jumped out of the car and started sprinting toward him.
“Hey! Stop!”
The man turned.
Bard might have been fifty feet away.
Against the flickering flames, he could just make out the man’s face.
There were runes tattooed all over it.
In his right hand was a black book.
He lifted his left hand and pointed all five fingers toward Bard.
Instantly, pain shot up Bard’s side in a flash of flickering blue light.
A spiraling blast of turquoise flame cut across him like lightning.
Bard was knocked sideways and screamed like an animal.
A mad one.
Somehow, he managed to turn the fall into a slight roll and came up crouched, one hand at the cuff of his pants leg.
He pulled it back.
Strapped beneath it was the small 9mm revolver he had kept there all these years.
Just in case.
A moment like this.
Bard pulled it from its holster before the wizard-looking motherfucker could do a thing.
Bard sent his own fireball.
A fiery ball made of lead.
Bang.
He put one clean through the man’s chest.
The robed man dropped his book and began to fall backward.
Then the air around him changed.
Tendrils of inexplicable darkness began spreading through the space surrounding his body.
A living darkness.
A darkness that could be seen even in the night.
It engulfed him like a cell having lunch.
Then, for lack of a better word, the damn thing folded in upon itself.
For an instant, Bard glimpsed a ball of brilliant blue light.
Then it was gone.
Bard fell to the ground, breathing heavily.
His teeth had been clenched so hard that he’d chipped one.
Again.