What happens when you sleep? Do you go to a safe corner of the world protected by the fact that night ambushes are a technique the military has used for centuries, but are not in the author handbooks for ‘proper none grimdark MCs’? Do mammalian monsters turn off even though fifty-percent of Earth based mammals are nocturnal? No, of course not, you’re wrapped up in the protection of horses snorting to alert for bad things or a single guard who is never tired or pissed off about their rotation to the no sleep zone.

  You also have magic systems which have clearly definite rules that don’t include spidey sense tingling. There’s an obvious answer. Protected from off worlder interference, most of the world doesn’t actually want to try and kill the thing that smells like blood, angst, and a love triangle. There’s also the sheer power of not noticing, which is super convenient when you’re an off worlder. Off worlders don’t want it in the story so it’s never there. Which is why Spoon never gets to exist anywhere in a story.

  Laural does have a network of awake mice and rats, just like certain princesses of a specific brand. You know, the Mouse has ears everywhere and every one of them can crush you with a thimble full of accumulated clout. Her little army of alerts are generally not as reliable as you might hope. They might get scared and run away, rather than support there temporarily passing through mistress.

  Fortunately though, there is a secret weapon. A night weapon, and Kriti, having recalled they should have been dead several nights over without some sort of protection waited up to see who it is.

  She took up a spot on top of the caravan. Cause it totally had to be the caravan doing it, right? What else could produce enough power to effectively shield them from anything and everything. She didn’t understand the cart, but it was sketchy in the way only a home of a chiropractor could be. At one point, she’d even had a very specific thought. After a dream, she’d known a thing about the cart. But then she’d become fully awake and whatever revelation about the cart got through vanished in the morning suns. This was not like her. Traveling hundreds of miles and not spending enough time planning side murders or exactly how to get revenge for her husband’s death.

  She’d been busy, just being. It was nice not to be working through the lists now and again. These whackadoodles made not killing sort of alright. She could still exterminate any of them or all of them, the hissing in her hair reminded her. Still though, she’d gotten far too lax. Now she needed to know. Who or what, she patted the cart top, made them sleep proof?

  This night had been ideal because she saw aways back a very large pile of black gauze thing. It hadn’t quite been a shadow or a ghoul, but that in between where a big honking noncorporeal shadow third-space creature crawled out too soon and now had to squint until a flaming ball of gas got defeated by rotational forces. One could never understand how it is beings from another dimension never figured out how to portal in at the most appropriate times. Like why wail and throw around things, when you could wait until someone’s back is turned and portal in for a quick hack, hack.

  That’s what she would do with interdimensional capabilities. It could enhance her skills. Too bad they always ended up eating your brain or whatever thing you held as good. She considered that for someone like her maybe it wouldn’t eat anything and simply starve to death. She patted her hair. It would eat her snacks, and she had her closest ties to her hair, not in her hair, to her hair.

  If their nighttime shield flunked, then interdimensional or not, she’d let her hair speak to it. It was a myth that a mirror could protect anyone. A myth that most of her rare kind enjoyed perpetuating. The original gorgon got her head cut off while sleeping. What a heroic tale that is.

  As she waited, no owl hooted, as the rise of a gibbons’ moon, the monkey moon, blinked down on them. The monkey eye only showed up every other day. Some called it cyclops monkey, but that was a species old rumor. Maybe there had once been two eyes and an off worlder looking for an impossible mission stole the moon from the sky and slipped it into a pocket. Which he then lost and it despawned a moon.

  Great job. Now we can’t have twin or three moons which is clearly the only acceptable fantasy moons because counting to six is hard. Anyway, the gibbons’ gibbous moon hung out over the stars of an off worlder that could not just shut the fuck up about random shit related to their world build. This had to be a literary jackwad. Only they can make fifteen adjectives boring and swearing lame. I mean only fuck and shit? We need improvements.

  Deep in the woods, she felt rather than heard it drifting towards her. Because how can all these interdimensional usually not corporeal beings suddenly go slam, slam on dirty when characters should wake up? But they can, because otherwise they would all die in their sleep. Just like her party should. They could have kept up a fire, but it was warm in summertime. Plus, the fire attracted angry tree spirits if you sued the wrong furry twigs. But don’t worry, coffee drinking characters don’t care without their fix. Addicts.

  The beast got close enough to make a shushing sound. It passed through the trees and blotted out the skyscape of stars behind it. Its mass having grown and become even more powerful in its native nocturnal habitat. She watched dispassionately as it made a direct line to the heat remaining in the coals. Maybe she’d been wrong and it was just a super heat hungry. A totally normal not monstrous magic dark shadow thing. Those had to be around somewhere.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  When it came into a circle of forty feet it froze then. It poked its claws at nothing doing nothing. It reversed a few feet, shook itself like a Fae stepping into an all elves luncheon. It drifted forward again with the same result.

  Spoon rolled over muttering in his sleep. The thing turned and fled. Kriti frowned. She dropped off her spot to the ground and went to inspect the spot. Much colder here where it had been. Now that she stood more in the same spot, she could measure against the trees around her. It had been a massive seventeen-foot tall noncorporeal being in the height of its power at night. What could possibly stop that?

  She needed something smaller. A tester creature to throw at the wall. Fortunately, she had bait. And taking a bit of the leftovers from dinner she put it out about two or three feet from the line, which had protected the whole camp, the horse and the caravan.

  She didn’t even make it back to the horses before seeing a strange rabbit with huge buck teeth and antlers jumping forward. It cleaned its ears with already bloody paws. Not an herbivore. It was about the size of a large dog and kept its ears flicking in every direction. A predator but not the top of the food chain by any means.

  She tossed out food scraps nearby herself, bringing it closer and closer into camp. Just in case it involved eyelines, she kept away from everyone as best she could. The thing hopped, hoping, and humped forward, stopping to sniff the next bait suspicious about its sudden chance at being fed chunks of meat from nowhere. It too stopped, stiffened, and then hopped backwards. But it didn’t flee, she jumped forward snapping it by the neck so it could make no sound, and with hands that used to ring necks before she got to class, held it tightly. It could not squeal and instead tried to kick and bite to no avail.

  She yanked it towards her and felt the barrier. The creature immediately went unconscious with her thrashing. She couldn’t pull it in but it did not awaken either. Trying to force it through the barrier like this rendered it weaker somehow. She needed even more animals to test. This is how one learned, animal testing. The basics of so many scientists were dead rats, this was just a dead bunny. Still, she didn’t leave it unconscious and shoved it out at arm’s length beyond the shield to see if it would wake. She carefully reduced her grip so as not to throttle it to death.

  It slowly became less lolling. She tossed it away along with more food once it had the ability to sit upright. It slowly waggled around, then its ears bolted up and it went flying away at speed. Not terrified of the barrier, terrified of her.

  Kriti needed to investigate further. Carefully, she stepped out then quickly in. She felt nothing saw nothing.

  Leaving that behind, she walked over to the group all on the ground deeply sleeping. None of them roused by any of the dangers that could have happened this night. Only the horses had watched her with their strange large eyes. She’d threatened them to shut up and never tell Laural anything already. Horses are smart. They listened.

  Only Sleepnir gave her guff about things, and that always when far away and protected from crossbow bolts by cover. Arkle had no fear at all which she had to hand to the horse. He was simply built different.

  She did check the horses, quickly and with sugar lump bribes. Arkle refused but everyone else got their payment. As a practicer of her craft, not witchcraft mind, assassin craft, she knew exactly whom you could pay off.

  She couldn’t immediately find any signs nearer to the sleeping group, so she tried a quick circle that slowly spiraled in closer and closer. Nothing there. Nothing on the outer edge. She inspected each sleeping bag and sleeping form, but they had drool, spit, and no indication of magic.

  Nettle couldn’t do this. Day might be able too, but it would be a departure from her typical skills. Laural had plants but no plants did anything on this event. Bodi might have a blessing or two. Maybe an odd skillset that naturally gave him a perk. She’d yet to discover his knack exactly yet. Still though this didn’t’ feel like orcish abilities. That left, the useless one.

  Or was he? A born vampire shouldn’t be able to be out in the sunshine. A born vampire needed invited into homes and villages. Any place with the correct natural barriers. But he’d never been invited anywhere. He’d never burst into flames in the sun. She’d assumed his vampirism got diluted to nothing with all his other family history.

  But a vampire’s domain was at night. When the moon gazes down on you. She knew how to check and all she needed to do would be give him a sleeping draught and then move him a few feet and rest. Nothing could be easier. Except it would be annoying to move a limp body, but she’d hauled around larger dead things.

  She’d left out her supplies and got what she needed. Carefully, she went over to him but as she got closer, she stopped. The potion in her hand grew heavier. An overwhelming sense of exhaustion flooded her, along with no interest in doing anything. She put down the potion and instantly the brain fog cleared. A protection circle that misdirects your thoughts and feelings. Very vampiric.

  That explained how she could go in and out. He reverse vampired it. A barrier that you could invite things through, but if they weren’t invited, they were compelled away. How in the hell did he do that? Could it be genetic? Did he know he could do that? No, if he did he would have used it other times. During the day, when it would be useful to have a protection circle. Maybe he couldn’t do it during the day. Diurnal vampires hardly ever existed. They’re mammals and most are nocturnal. A few are crepuscular, most active around twilight. She chuckled to herself. A night vampire always riding during the day. Could he know? She didn’t think so. Spoon had told them all about his practice with the spoons. Would he spend so much time on a useless skill if he knew about his other abilities? Probably not, or he would confirm people fit in the right spots for a proper good-nighty camp.

  No. All this time, their night vampire had been working in his sleep. She chuckled to herself. All this time, and she couldn’t have killed any of them at night. How unexpected. Tonight, she will get no sleep, but tomorrow, she would rest easy. Knowing that to kill a vampire, one needed only that globe of fire in the sky.