The Sgàil Riders

He pulled his scarf tighter around his nose and mouth as the cold pierced his face and lungs. How he had managed to get lost was beyond him. He should have taken the advice of his buddy and not gone alone. But alas here he was, standing alone in the middle of the vast forest of the Appalachians. If he was right then he was about halfway up Mount Mitchell in North Carolina. The mountain itself was huge and stood as the highest point in the Appalachians, at 6,684 feet. A cold hard place to be in during the dead of winter. Knowing this knowledge and actually standing there where very much not the same and in fact helped very little in the grand scheme of things.

His job, so to speak, was to find that which couldn't be found. This job had sounded simple enough when his, soon to be, commanding officer had walked up to him at base camp those many years ago. He had been a private back then and hadn't the experience under his belt that he did now. He still didn't know what the guy had seen in him, but he was grateful.

"It's still in the experimental phase." He had been told. If only he had known then what he knew now, maybe things would have turned out much different. It was cold here, temperatures at close to 15 degrees. He could feel the moisture from his breath freezing the scarf to his face. Only thing on his side was the calm wind. Most of the time North Carolina was protected from the colder air due to the high mountain ranges. So, basically, he was cold but it could of been worse. He knew because he had been in worse.

Two weeks ago he had been sitting in some random bar, downing another drink he had lost count of, when a man approached him looking to hire his team for yet another unexplained event. An event, like many others, that they never seemed to find answers to. In fact it only led to more questions. He had been tired, dirty, and had just wanted to drown his problems in whisky followed by sleep. He had thought about turning the man down, and should have, but his interest had been peeked with the strangers next words.

"It took many people and many resources but we managed to get information on the next event. But not just that. We found something, something very extraordinary." The guy leaned in closer and whispered, "Something that could change the fabric of everything we believe to be true about the world." The man slid what looked like a small square piece of glass across the table towards him.

"What is it?" He had asked the stranger as he picked it up for a closer look. The glass was about an inch thick and on the inside was a design of a beautiful tree. One of a like he had never seen before. The trunk of the tree was massive in height as well as thickness, the branches coming from the tree gave the viewer a feeling of eternity. Just looking at it made him feel as if the weight of a thousand worries had been lifted. Upon a closer look he also noted that there were five circles. Ones he had thought at first had been stars, actually turned out to be fruit. A type of fruit he had never seen before, falling from the tree itself. No other fruit could be found among the depths of the leaves in the tree, just those five. It meant something, he was sure, but the question remained of what?

"Finding answers to this glass is what we were hoping you could help us with. We want you and your team to go to the location we found and see what can be found there." The stranger had grabbed the artifact from his fingers and placed it in a bright red pouch. Leaning back, he gave the stranger a thoughtful look,

"How do you know this isn't just another wild goose chase?"

"Because it comes attached with whatever this piece is. This is the farthest we have come since first bringing our group together." The stranger leaned forward again and placed his arms on the dirty round table, cluttered with empty glasses, "Besides we both know that with one phone call I could have you ordered to do it anyway."

"Then why didn't you?" He gave the stranger his best bored look. The man stood up, placed the pouch in front of him on the table and straightened his already perfectly starched black suit.

"Because we both know you are going to help us, so lets not fool ourselves shall we? Inside the pouch, along with the glass, is a number you are to call. You will get further instruction then." With those last words the stranger walked away, out the door into the night.

His horse shied away suddenly, almost unseating him and pulling him from his thoughts. He had become so lost. Following the river was supposed to be easy, but in the white wonderland everything looked the same. The path had been rough a couple of times and it had made it impossible to stick close to the river and part of why he was lost now.

His horse spooked again forcing him to dismount and walk around to the front of the animal. He proceeded to lead his horse up the narrow deer trail,

"Mac an donnas, if my men ever find out I got lost, I will never hear the end of it." He sighed to his horse jokingly. He found that talking to his horse helped to calm the nerves that crawled under his skin. He wondered what was up with his horse, there wasn't even a sound on the breeze.

He froze in his tracks, suddenly realizing that was what was bothering him. It was too quiet. The lack of sound in a forest was never a good sign. His horse picked that moment to freak, rearing up on his hind legs. Sweat began to run down the horses magnificent black muscled coat. His hands, being so cold, couldn't hold onto the reins and they jerked from his grasp. He could do nothing but watch as his only source of transportation disappeared through the trees.

"Math dha-rireadh!" He shouted to the sky. Could his day have gotten any worse? With no other choice he pressed forward, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he was headed towards something big. It seemed crazy to him, but he felt that deep down what he was looking for was right above the next hill. He could feel an energy coursing through him, syncing to the rhythm of his pounding heart.

Reaching closer to the top of the hill he started to notice changes to the land around him. Strangely these were all things he should of been able to notice from miles back. He stopped right next to a rock that looked like it had been set on fire from the inside and burnt its way out, splitting the rock almost all the way down the center. For just a second he thought about turning around and running, of following the path of his horse and turning tail. Just as he was about to follow his though he heard someone whisper his name followed by, what sounded like, fire crackers.

He couldn't turn back now, this had been what he had been chasing after for so long. Maybe he should of left and contacted his team then returned, but something pressed him forward. What he saw then made the northern lights look small. Getting down on his hands and knees he started to crawl towards the top peek of the hill, climbing over and around chipped rock, singed grass, and bark splinters from what looked like exploded trees. He even crawled through huge holes where giant trees had been yanked from the ground. As he reached through yet another hole in the cold wet snow and dirt, what he saw shocked him to the core. Never again, he knew, would his life ever be the same.