FicWad

The town of Darkhill lay in the northernmost reaches of Mossflower Country, tucked neatly between the foothills that led to the more looming mountains that were the gateway to the Northlands proper. The mountains provided a clean and markable boundary between the two regions, actually far neater than the historical boundary had ever been. Indeed, Darkhill had once been part of the so-called wild vermin territory of the extreme north, though the weather-worn permanence of its wooden and brick houses and the sensible layout of its streets in themselves told that any ties to horde behavior were long in the past here.

The Northern War had not been good to Darkhill by sheer location alone. The instigating horde had come from even further northeast, aimed at Redwall simply because nobeast had done so for a while, at least as far as the citizens of Darkhill could see it. It just so happened that this group encountered a party of Mossflowerites laying railway track before coming even close to the Abbey, thus setting the front lines of the battle in Darkhill's collective back yard. Relatively few residents fought in the actual war, though the town's trained defenses stayed on guard for the duration. Most of the town's casualties came from mere chance and circumstance - a badly-aimed mortar shell here, some skirmishers and sharpshooters there. The Guard had kept out of this as much as possible, knowing that more aggressive defense could only end in specifically-aimed offense.

While Mossflower Country was in a constant state of expansion, its government never used force to initiate the acquiring of land, particularly when true offers of protection seemed to suffice. When the other side initiated, though, all bets were off. The trained and efficient army from Salamandastron had handily shoved the horde backwards from whence it came. The mountains were the last defensible position for the sorely-damaged horde, and with that boundary set, the Mossflowerites were quick to snap up the band of land that they had just cleared out for their own.

In their victory, the Mossflowerites had diplomatically approached Darkhill on the matter. The mayor, a ferret called Garlock, had initially protested, stating that all the town wished for was to be left alone. When the keeper of the field hospital released two wounded-but-healed Darkhill civilians from her care, however, they spoke only the highest praise for the care they had received and described how the patients had been Redwaller, hordebest, and bystander alike. Such a service being paid without being requested was, in Garlock's mind, even better than being entirely left alone, and thus the union was forged.

Some of Darkhill's predominantly-musteline population had complained at first, and for the first couple of years, Garlock could never be certain of what degree of hate mail would be stuffed in his box on any given morning. As more and more time passed without significant event other than the initial union, the attitudes and objections of the populace subsided into the previous pattern of leaving well enough alone. After all, if the leaders in Redwall were adhering to that themselves, why make a fuss that would only draw more attention?

And, truth be told, Garlock did not at all mind relinquishing some governmental issues associated with running an independent township to a larger body. The ferret kept his status and worth within Darkhill, but with a fraction of the work. He didn't have to handle the taxes anymore, for one thing. Keeping up health care and productive large-scale agriculture also had fallen into the able paws at Redwall, and those paws had opened up superiorly accessible transportation between these relevant points of importance, systems that Garlock could have never campaigned to fund when Darkhill was his sole responsibility. He still had to lead the local politics and manage any correction of contained criminal affairs, but such intrigue was rare there, and Garlock had to admit that he enjoyed the occasional stir to spice up the usual "leave alone and be left alone in return."

As official citizens of Mossflower Country, the residents of Darkhill were also fully entitled to participate in such affairs as Nameday. Each year, the embossed and sealed personal invitation from the Abbot of Redwall himself found its way into Garlock's quarters, and after the first one, the ferret opened each, examined the penmanship and paper quality, and then threw it out. The one time Garlock had attended, right after the Northern War, was just as much political as it was curiosity, but it did not go so well. Despite the integration of species so commonplace further south, Garlock felt as if he were profoundly outside of that sphere at every turn he took, and creatures of all sorts started to express interest in his Darkhill as a place to live. Governmental union was one thing, but large groups of unfamiliar creatures moving in would no longer constitute paws-off or leaving alone, so after that first year, Garlock simply chose to excuse himself before he even arrived.

The other residents of Darkhill had certainly not been forbidden from celebrating, though the vast majority of them observed the occasion with a level of disinterest and apathy that would have made their mayor proud. Some, however, took it for a more legitimate excuse than usual to break out the wine, ale, and grog and carouse in the streets. On other occasions, such behavior would be regarded as a stir about town, but for this case, Garlock was even more content than usual to block out even the goings on of his own community and sit in his quarters behind a closed door.

But even comfortably inertia-free mayors can get stir crazy, and in his night of self-containment, Garlock took to pacing and could not bring himself to sleep for more than an hour or so at a time when his mate Falla called him to bed. He shifted constantly and dreamed only that he was shifting about even more, which might as well have not been dreaming at all. When the first hints of color snuck up behind the drawn curtains of the bedroom, Falla, too tired herself to exhibit any proper impatience, encouraged her restless husband to walk it off outside now that the revelers had gone.

The soil around Darkhill was still laced with frost and hardness at this time of year, only compounded by the same sort of rock that comprised the not-so-distant mountains being covered by minimal amounts of the frozen less-compact dirt. This cold solidness pulled in moisture from the more active springtime to the south, blanketing the predawn with a fuzzy layer of mist which was, on this particular morning, also laced by a faint odor of sulfur.

Garlock wandered through this tangible fog as aimlessly as he had wandered the more fleeting fogs of sleep, taking the occasional misstep, brain not recognizing that his nose was picking up something strange, ears not rendering the surrounding world with any degree of sharpness. Thus, for the first ponderous instant, the primal rumbling and the expectation of a step to land on ground that turned out to be absent seemed to be only a further sign of overwhelming exhaustion.

Garlock tripped and rolled forward, a neat somersault propelled by the ground over which it occurred rather than by the beast completing the stunt, and with the pounding against his entire body rather than just behind his eyes and eardrums, the ferret was awakened in the most rude of all manners. He planted all four of his paws on the ground in a futile quest for steadiness, only to push himself off to the side as a furrow in the ground, fragments of soil pushing upwards in a V several feet high, extended past where he had been standing the moment before the mayhem started.

With the brittle frozen rockiness of the Darkhill ground, the astonishing up-and-down swing did not tangibly manifest as it looked here - this was no frantic roiling of a terranean ocean, but rather the jarring vibration of someone grabbing a cabinet of china and shaking it with every ounce of his strength. Sense of balance entirely robbed of him, Garlock was forced himself to drag himself along by the ground itself, or by trees or curbs or whatever else his splintering claws could catch upon, coming closer and closer to being pinned by the serpentine tracks of the earth as he grasped toward his home.

But china and brittle ground, when stressed enough, also fissure and break. As the shaking persisted, some of the darting furrows pulled open along their middle line, and entirely new cracks burst open and pinched shut and burst open again to either side, giving fleeting opportunities to stare into the dark inner workings of a planet gone mad. Garlock recoiled from such an opportunity to observe and instead could only see the horror as a rat who had run out into the street in a panic failed to watch his steps and fell into the same gaping crack, his sudden squeak of dismay serving as the last evidence that he had ever been there at all.

Biting his lower lip until blood came out, Garlock managed to pull himself to a tree and climb up just far enough that he was no longer in contact with the ground. The shaking was more precarious, but there were no cracks in the bark. The ferret shut his eyes and tried to count his breaths to remind himself that he was still alive, but he had lost count by the time the shaking subsided.

The lingering strands of fog did not stop the damage from being clear as Garlock returned to his home. The streets were riddled with cracks, lanterns and signposts had been torn down or even thrown, and many a pile of bricks or wooden planks lay where a home had once stood. Yet the fog was not all-revealing. At a distance, Garlock's home appeared to have been spared the brunt, but as the ferret came up to his door, he noticed that the right window had been shattered and an inch-wide split running from the ground straight through the room traversed the frame. Garlock's heart started palpitating violently, no matter how secure his home had seemed to him just moments before.

"Falla?" Garlock called, his voice higher and less authoritative than it had ever been before. He peered into each room of the one-story wood-and-brick building, each time sounding only more frantic. "Falla? Falla!"

The bedroom lay at the back right end of the house, and its contents cut Garlock's words off in a strangulated gasp. The crack ran back here as well. The bed leaned toward it, the open wardrobe was bisected by it, and, most troublingly, a hem of green fabric stuck out of the crack closest to the bed. The source of his own shaking now, Garlock approached and confirmed his fears upon noticing a tailtip hanging out from this hem and nothing more besides ground beyond it.

For a moment, Garlock rocked back and forth on his feet. Then, with an energy reserve that surprised even him, he dashed from the house and onto the splintered path toward Redwall. Leaving well enough alone was all well and good when nothing was happening, but if the very country itself - not its politics - could raise up as it just had, Garlock now fully intended to partake of of any benefits that his union agreement could afford him.