Erica started to feel something awakening in her, a stirring in that strange space within her that she had learned to associate with the use of ‘Magic Sense’. She quietly exited her tent and walked out into the moonlight from under the tree cover. She sought a place where she could get away from others and sat under the skies in a small clearing.

She searched again for the space within herself and soon found that same stirring, she looked up at the second moon, and once again tried to bring that feeling out as she felt herself connecting with it.

It stirred within Erica as the second Moon filled her consciousness, and then, suddenly, she felt the connection of the ecstatic union from the space within her connecting with the Second Moon. She felt an opening within her that was hard to describe. She felt fuller than she ever had before. She relaxed through the feeling and let it wash through her, rising into a heady crescendo until she felt the world swirl into an infinite pool of power, beyond the universe, beyond the very center of things, beyond everything.

Erica lost all sense of time and direction, a low moan escaped her lips as it filled her with an indescribable sensation, her mind raced with thoughts, images, ideas, and then, finally, words. 

‘Keep and be kept. Secrets alight. Ever forming. Never ending. Boundless knowledge. Shapeless insight. Magick Comprehension!’

The words came to her just as they had before, this time feeling far more potent. The world around her returned to solidity. Erica lowered her hand to the ground to steady herself and took slow breaths as she tried to reorient herself to four-dimensional reality.

The sense of fullness was far beyond what she was used to, she felt as if there were suddenly much more of her than there had been before.

She took a deep breath and pulled the crystal out of her pocket. “Keep and be kept. Secrets alight. Ever forming. Never ending. Boundless knowledge. Shapeless insight. Magick Comprehension!” She repeated the words in a hushed voice, her eyes wide from the excitement.

There was no dramatic shift in her perception, in fact nothing seemed to have changed at all, but she could feel the fullness within her start to drain. Erica focused on the crystal reestablishing her connection with it, once again, thoughts, feelings, and images crept into her mind. She could not learn what they sought to teach her. They were a roadmap to wielding the power within. 

Erica forced her mind to remain calm and still while the comprehension of it all filled her. Suddenly, she knew what the fullness and emptiness was within her. I was more like a pool of raw potential to manifest creation. For lack of a better word, it was mana. And the draining she felt was her using her mana to manifest change, a spell.

‘Magick Sense’ and “Magick Comprehension’  were magick spells that had come from her communion with the Second Moon!

The thing in her hand was crystallized magick, a miracle concentrated and solidified. Suddenly it all made sense. The zombies existed because of magick. She felt her mana depleting but the information was coming too slowly.

She decided to try something new. “All things are bound and boundless. Form is the impression of the thing. I awaken to the truth of all things. Let all things be felt. Let power be known. I open to the truth. Magick Sense!” She quietly recited the spell for ‘Magick Sense’ and felt the world come alive around her. All of the mysteries of the crystal were laid bare to her senses. 

She could now fully appreciate the potential of the crystal, it’s inherent nature was to disperse but it had been hyperconcentrated into a form that no longer could. It was now a vibrational relick, pure magick condensed to a point that it functioned the same as if it were purely physical. There was a startling amount of power within it, enough to blow up a building, if released all at once.

Her spells stopped at the same time, leaving her with an empty feeling she now recognized as mana depletion. She looked down at the crystal in her palm and wondered how to release the power within it. It could be used, theoretically, but she had no idea how to go about doing that.

She was left with a mixed feeling of elation and frustration,  and sat with the feeling for sometime, feeling nervous as rowdy orcs messed around nearby. She vaguely thought she heard someone having sex just beyond the treeline but tried to ignore it.

She was just thinking about getting up when Derrick appeared out of the night, his eyes shining like those of a cat. “There’s something going on outside, Coco told me to get you.” He said.

One of the orcs called out to them and Derrick cracked a smirk as he looked over at them and gave a slight wave. “Come on.” He said, returning his gaze to her, his expression serious. 

Erica nodded and got up, following him back to their campsite. Coco was up and dressed, looking worried. “What’s up?” Erica asked.

“Not sure.” Coco replied,”There’s people out there, a lot of them, from the sound of all the trucks.” She told her.

“I’ll go check it out.” Derrick said.

“Hold on.” Coco said, tilting her head to listen. “Let’s lay low for now.” She instructed.

“How are we supposed to know what’s going on then?” He asked.

Coco shot him a look. “If shots start popping off, we’ll know, in which case, I’d rather us be farther away from the entrance.” She told him.

“Word, that makes sense.” Derrick admitted. 

“So, what? We just sit here and wait?” Erica asked.

“Roll up the tent, I’ll get the horses ready. Worst case scenario, we might have to bounce up out of here.” Coco instructed.

They remained hushed as they prepared themselves to leave, if needed, Erica found herself suddenly feeling very sleepy and wondered if she would not have been better off getting more sleep. She could not bring herself to regret it though, if anything, she just wanted to keep studying the crystal in her pocket.

She noticed some of the people closest to their camp were following their example and getting their camps ready to go. Most people started flocking to the entrance though. It soon seemed as if the whole camp had woken up and was rushing to see what the commotion was.

They finished getting ready and jumped on their horses, Derrick climbed a tree to try and get a better vantage point of what was going on. The raucous of birds alerted Erica to dawn approaching as light slowly stretched across the sky.

Tense silence stretched on for what felt like hours but what she judged as perhaps thirty minutes, based on the changing of the sky. Suddenly Derrick jumped down from the tree. “It looks like they’re letting them into the camp.” He said.

“Do they look dangerous?” Coco asked.

“Kids and families mostly, from what I’ve seen so far. It looks like there’s some soldiers too though.” He answered.

“How many?” Coco asked him.

“No idea, I couldn’t see past the gate.” He admitted.

Coco seemed to consider this for a moment before nodding her head. “Let’s check it out.” She said, motioning her horse forward and toward the large crowd. 

Erica was thankful for the improved vantage point from on top of her cremello, who she found herself bonded with, in spite of the horse’s bad temper. She craned her head over and saw a long line of people filing in from the entrance gate.

Just as Derrick had said, it was mostly families, many with small children, some of them infants. Many were transformed but most were ordinary humans, as far as Erica could tell. It looked to be families of transformed humans traveling with their loved ones.

Erica spotted an orcwoman holding tight to a very human-looking baby and guessed she must have been her mother, the man who might have been the baby's father followed closely behind, also human. She felt a twisting in her heart at the thought of what people like them must have been going through. 

She suddenly counted herself very lucky to have only had to experience her lover suddenly turning even more beautiful and also losing all apparent sexual interest in her. It was hard to count through the crowd but she estimated the number of new people to be upwards of twenty thousand as they filed in. They all had the stunned look of refugees.

The sun crested into the sky as dawn gave way to early daytime. The population of their little sanctuary had more than doubled and people milled all around, most in varying states of shock. There were fights and yelling, orcs seemed to vie to establish their personal territories, people with wolf ears and cat ears bickered and occasionally came to blows in an apparent attempt to establish the packing order.

Families found themselves sucked into fights with each other, ordinary humans banded together to press the orcs who found themselves suddenly outnumbered, real violence started breaking out. An orc attempted to rape a woman with dog ears near the tree line, her family, ordinary humans rushed to the scene and tried to kill him.

The orcs were strong, much stronger than ordinary humans, and they seemed to be particularly vicious, and not especially intelligent. They seemed to be a source of some of the worst conflicts. The first attempted rape only seemed to spur on more of them, a young women was literally ripped away from her family and held down in front of everyone. 

She turned in her attacker’s grasp and kicked him hard in the neck, Erica heard an audible pop as the orcman suddenly spit up a mouth full of blood and leaned over, apparently choking. The girl kicked the orc again, her heel landing perfectly between his eyes, and another one connected with his jaw, knocking him unconscious.

The girl rolled over and pulled a small pair of scissors from out of her dress and plunged them into the orcman’s eye with a carnal scream. 

The young woman rose from the body of the orc and quickly scampered away moments before it lunged forward, now a zombie. People screamed and fled in all directions as the orc zombie lunged, sprinting at the crowd, in a mad search for a fresh victim.

Erica sat atop her horse and scanned the chaos with a sense of numbness. It was all so surreal she still felt that at any moment she would wake from her dream. Suddenly, a group of orcs pounced on the zombie. She heard sickening cracks and grunts as they pulled at it’s arms and legs, dismembering it.

The dwarves were starting to assert themselves amidst the violence, they were even stronger than orcs, though far less numerous. Most of them seemed more focused on keeping anyone from robbing their stuff, though one had ripped the arms off a young man when a group of them had surrounded him and was using it to beat the others to death with it.

A series of gunshots rang out forcing everyone to duck in cover. The elfwoman they had seen working with Jeremy at the entrance stood next to a dwarfman, and a humanman, with wolf ears, holding a pistol. Silence stretched on as all eyes looked at them. 

“Ok, it looks like I have all of your attention.” The elfwoman said through a microphone attached to a large speaker she seemed to have just set up. “Unless you want to be trapped in here with a bunch of zombies, I expect you all learn how to make peace with each other very quickly.” She continued.

She looked over at the boy whose arms had been ripped off. “Gather up the dying and disembody the dead. Whatever happened just now is in the past, but anyone else who breaks the peace from here on out will be dealt with swiftly.” Her voice rang out through the enclosed space.

She continued to speak, organizing the swarthing mass of people into action through her loudspeaker. Once the zombies were taken care of, and the injured were either dealt with or given first aid, she proceeded to give a speech about how everyone would need to perform some sort of chore for the place to function.

“All of these people are refugees from Rutland, where the gentleman beside me.” She said, indicating the tall man with wolf ears “Staged a violent uprising against the military, a few hours ago, because they were abducting people like us and experimenting on them. He helped free almost all of them and lead them away, then they wound up here.”

She paused to let her words sink in. “The grim reality here is that external conflict is, at this point, inevitable. In the worst case, we’ll be going to war. Those of us who have been transformed have no choice since, one way or the other, we’re going to have to face this. However, those of you who have not been transformed, probably do have a choice.”

“I ask that you make your choice now. If you stay here, you will be caught in the conflict, if you leave, you might be to avoid it.” She said, letting the words settle.

Erica considered her words as well, it was true that she probably could escape on her own, as long as she abandoned Coco. The very idea felt absurd to her. She looked over and noticed Coco watching her, she took a deep breath and settled into her seat on her cremello, intending to show with her body language, that she would not be going anywhere.