Patrick Stops The Hylund Forest Fire
Patrick had barely made it up the path to his house before the smoke hit him.
The Land Pirates had dropped him at the edge of the woods just after dawn, as promised. Salty Merlot had even wished him a quiet rest of the winter, which Patrick had taken as a good omen. He’d walked the familiar deer trail with Whiskers riding his shoulder and three more cats joining in trailing behind him in a loose, judgmental formation, already thinking about the book he’d left unfinished and the fact that nobody here was going to ask him to mediate an argument between a barbarian and a werewolf about who got to keep a shovel.
Then the wind shifted.
Smoke. Thick, resinous, wrong. Not a cookfire. Not Owlore burning herbs. Something bigger, farther out, and moving.
Whiskers hissed and dug claws into his cloak. One of the gray cats took off for the underbrush. Patrick stood still for a long moment, cigarette unlit between his fingers, staring through the trees until he saw the orange glow threading between the trunks like a second sunrise that had no business being there.
“Of course,” he said.
By the time he reached the village the Animalfolk were already in a panic. Chicton had the tavern doors thrown wide and was clucking orders at anyone who would listen. Windy had dragged half the stock of the shop out onto the path in case the fire reached them. A pair of rabbitfolk were arguing over whether they should dig a firebreak or just start praying. And every single one of them turned when they saw Patrick.
“You’ve returned!”
“The forest is burning! What do we do?”
He closed his eyes. Counted to three. Opened them again.
“I just got home,” he said. “I haven’t even taken my boots off.”
They stared at him like he’d spoken in a language they didn’t understand. A foxkit pushed forward, ears flat.
“But you’re back. You’ll know what to do.”
Patrick looked past them at the smoke rising over the canopy. Somewhere out there, somewhere near the place the locals called the Changeling Mirror Vault, if he remembered right. Somebody had done something extremely stupid with fire. He could almost picture it. A staff that threw fireballs with the reliability of a drunken archer. A group of people who treated “maybe don’t set the woods on fire” as optional. The same people he’d spent weeks trying to keep from accidentally ending the world while he was stuck in Goldvale.
They wouldn’t even know this was his problem. They were probably still inside whatever hole they’d found, congratulating themselves on surviving, while the Hylund Forest he’d chosen specifically because nothing ever happened in it burned around them.
He sighed, lit the cigarette, and took a long drag.
“All right,” he said. “Here’s a quest.”
The Animalfolk leaned in like he’d just offered them the meaning of life.
“You,” he pointed at the rabbitfolk, “start a firebreak on the east side of the ridge. Ten paces wide. Don’t argue about the digging, just dig. Chicton, get every waterskin and bucket you can find. Owlore, if you’ve got anything that puts out fire that isn’t a story, now’s the time. The rest of you pair up. One with water, one with a shovel or an axe. You see a spark, you kill it. You see an animal that can’t get out, you get it out. You do not stop until I say you stop or the fire dies.”
They were already moving. Someone had produced a drum. Someone else was singing. A bearfolk nearly as tall as Ursavus was organizing the heavier laborers with the kind of cheerful efficiency that made Patrick’s head hurt.
He watched them go, then looked down at Whiskers.
“I was gone for a few weeks,” he told the cat. “That’s it. A few weeks.”
Whiskers blinked slowly, unimpressed.
From the direction of the Changeling Mirror Vault, another tree went up with a crackling roar. Patrick took one more drag, flicked the cigarette into the dirt, and ground it out with his heel.
“Okay,” he said to nobody in particular. “Let’s go make sure the idiots didn’t kill my quiet.”
He started walking toward the smoke. The Animalfolk followed, still calling him Saint. He didn’t correct them. Not today. Today he needed them to listen.