Chapter 1 Part 5: Processing and Cover
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Chairman lay stretched out on the tarp in Ethan’s workshop, his body already beginning to stiffen, the antlers catching the overhead light whenever either of them moved. The space smelled of oil and cold concrete, layered with the familiar trace of blood that never quite disappeared after hunting season. For a few quiet minutes, neither of them spoke. The rush from the dungeon had faded, leaving behind the steadier realization that none of what they’d found excused neglecting everything else that still needed to be done.
Abigail was the first to break the silence. “We still have to take him in,” she said, nodding toward the deer. “Processing won’t wait, and I’m not letting a perfectly good buck go to waste just because today got weird.”
Ethan nodded. The normalcy of the task was grounding. “Yeah. Deer first. While we’re in town, we get the rest of what we need.”
She shifted her weight against the workbench, eyes already sharpening with focus. “Tarps will block the glow, but they’re not enough on their own. Fabric moves, and wind does whatever it wants. I don’t want to spend the next week wondering if something shifted the wrong way.”
“That’s fair,” Ethan said. “If we set posts well outside the frame and tie everything off low, with the weight carried by lines run through the trees above, nothing can drift inward even if the weather turns or something brushes against it.”
“And when we go back to look at it properly,” Abigail added, a note of energy creeping into her voice despite the long morning, “I don’t want that to be the moment we realize we forgot something basic. Measuring tape, extra lights—things that let us actually see what we’re dealing with without getting stupid about it.”
Ethan glanced at her and caught the shift. The fatigue was still there, but it had been pushed aside by curiosity. “So we do it right,” he said. “Handle the deer, grab supplies, then finish the job.”
They loaded Chairman into the truck with practiced efficiency, the routine steadying in a way neither of them commented on. The drive into town passed quietly, traffic light and ordinary, the road familiar beneath the tires. Nothing about it suggested how much the morning had already changed.
The processor was open when they arrived. The building hadn’t changed at all: weathered siding, a crooked sign by the door, the sharp, cold smell that greeted them the moment they stepped inside. The man behind the counter glanced over the deer, asked a few standard questions, and started filling out paperwork without much ceremony.
“Clean shot,” he said, making a note. “Should be ready in about a week.”
Ethan confirmed the cuts, Abigail signed where indicated, and that was it. Ten minutes of routine, ordinary business. Walking back out into the daylight, Abigail felt the quiet dissonance of having just handled something completely normal while carrying a secret that felt anything but.
Their next stop was the farm store back in Highland.
Inside, Abigail leaned against the cart, eyes moving over the aisles as she mentally checked off what they’d already discussed. She talked it through as they went, more to keep the plan straight than because Ethan needed the explanation. They selected enough posts to set a wide perimeter, spacing that would define the space without boxing it in, and chose nylon rope rated to hold up against weather and time.
In the tools aisle, Ethan paused long enough to add a couple of extra high-lumen flashlights to the cart, setting them alongside a measuring tape and a grabber tool. They already had lighting back at the farm, but redundancy felt smart, especially when they both knew they’d be spending more time around the gate than they should.
They paid in cash and headed back without lingering.
By the time they returned to the farm, the day was already well into the afternoon. They didn’t linger. The supplies were shifted from the workshop to the ATVs in a practiced rhythm, tarps folded and refolded as needed, posts clanking softly as they were lashed down, rope gathered and retied until nothing felt loose under their hands.
The ride into the woods was slow and deliberate, engines kept low more out of habit than necessity. Sunlight filtered through the trees as they left the road behind, and when they reached the ravine, they parked well back from the edge and carried the rest down by hand.
The gate was unchanged.
The crystalline frame still cast its faint blue light across the ground, less stark in daylight but no easier to ignore. The void inside remained perfectly still, offering no reaction to their presence. It simply existed.
They took a few minutes to look around carefully, scanning the ravine floor and the surrounding slopes for any sign of another slime or anything else out of the ordinary. When nothing stirred and the woods remained quiet, they moved on.
They began with the perimeter. They kept the perimeter roughly twenty feet back from the portal’s frame. Last time, it had reacted when they came within ten, and doubling that distance felt like a reasonable margin as pushing it any farther would have meant supporting far more tarp than either of them wanted to deal with.
They drove the posts deep into the ground at the bottom of the ravine, spacing them carefully to serve as low anchors. Rope was run between the posts and then carried upward, looped through trees and secured along the top of the ravine where it could bear the weight. Only once the lines were set did they start working the tarps into place, tying them high and letting them slope downward toward the anchors below.
The fabric was heavy and awkward, catching air if they weren’t careful, and the work demanded patience more than strength. They layered the tarps gradually, adjusting angles and tension until the glow dulled and broke apart, leaving no clear line of sight from above or along the slopes.
At one point, Abigail paused, watching the edge of the light as the tarp shifted slightly.
“You good?” Ethan asked.
She waited a second, then nodded. “Yeah. Just making sure.”
They continued without incident.
By the time they stepped back, hours had passed. Their arms ached, dirt ground into their gloves, and the ravine no longer looked like the site of anything unusual. It looked like a stretch of land mid-project, forgettable and easy to overlook.
They stood there quietly, taking it in.
“For now,” Ethan said at last, “that should do it.”
Abigail nodded, the earlier spark still there beneath the exhaustion. “For now.”
They packed up what they could and headed back the way they came, leaving the ravine behind.
Wrapped in tarps and broken shadow, the gate was no longer obvious from a distance. By the time they climbed back up out of the ravine and headed toward the ATVs, the light was already starting to fade, dusk settling in around the trees. When they looked back once more before leaving, there was no telltale glow behind them—nothing to mark the spot as anything other than another stretch of uneven ground on the farm.
Chapter 1 Part 1
Chapter 1 Part 2
Chapter 1 Part 3
Chapter 1 Part 4
Chapter 1 Part 5 -
This concludes Chapter 1. Feedback appreciated.
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this rewrite is much more legible and easy to follow
better flow too -
@dwarf said in Chapter 1 Part 5: Processing and Cover:
this rewrite is much more legible and easy to follow
better flow tooNext up will be diving into the dungeon. going to implement a 10e-ish type of system for this story
