The farmland around Luminar covered thousands of acres. To travel from the furthest north-east edge to the south-western limit would take literally days on foot. Areas that were too distant for tending by the villagers fell under the care of separate homesteads, each containing a group of working families.

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Land within two miles of the Wall of Light was too dry and too brightly lit to grow anything other than hardy grass – worthless as a crop, but excellent for feeding grazing animals. Garganipedes, huge lumbering insectoid creatures, were the most common and productive of all such livestock. They hatched-out over five feet in length and grew to at least a hundred feet when mature. Their upper halves comprised of soft, blubbery yellow tissue covered with near-transparent skin; beneath this skittered thousands of slender stick-limbs. At both ends of the massive animals were clusters of eye-orbs above large maws which constantly scooped-up and devoured grass. Garganipedes had a number of uses: every day they laid a handful of foot-long soft-eggs – each offering a tasty meal for five people; the preserved meat from one adult beast could last an entire family over a year; and the brittle shells of their under-limbs could be used instead of wood. As for caring for the beasts, so long as garganipedes had grass to eat they were subdued and content. The life of a Gargan-tender was a very easy one...

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Normally.

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Ciornik was the oldest tender of his household and had grown lazier with each year. He no longer monitored the health of the hundreds of animals under his supervision. Nor did he check for hatchlings. And for every egg he bothered to load into his handcart, another was left in the grass to rot – simply to save the man bending his back. After an afternoon of what he considered ‘labour’, Ciornik would sit in the shadow of his cart and sleep. When his stomach grew hungry after sundown, he would wander home to seek supper and a night’s unearned rest.

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The sun had shrunk to a green sliver on the western horizon, paled into utter insignificance by the Northern Light-Wall. Ciornik dozed soundly, his thin form in a foetal-ball whilst his hands twisted and knotted his wispy white beard.

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A rumble awoke him suddenly – but not, for once, the internal bubbling of his own digestive juices... Something external and unusual. Not the noise of a rising storm. Not the sound of another cart approaching... Something distant and massive...

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“Dammit....” He yawned and stretched, trying to decide whether he was actually concerned enough to investigate. Curiosity finally overcame idleness, so he rose...

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And looked at the grass, dumbfounded.

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The long blue grass shifted around him. It didn’t flow under the unseen force of moving air, since there was no wind at all – rather it vibrated with an unearthly shiver...

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“What..?”

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Ciornik turned about in a half-circle. The strange rumbling could still be heard. Surely the sound and this uncanny motion were not mere coincidences... After a few seconds, he realized the noise was from over a small hill twenty yards north. He began to pace towards the rise, one hand scratching at his backside.

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What he saw beyond the hilltop made him drop to his knees in surprise and disbelief.

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A low valley ran from the foot of the hill towards the gleaming façade of the Wall of Light. Usually garganipedes would be ambling along the full two-mile length of this valley and up its shallow walls, their feeding monotonous and graceful.

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Not now.

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Hundreds of the beasts were stampeding towards him, with a terrible haste that defied their bulks and their normally placid temperaments. Ciornik could almost smell the awful fear which had driven the creatures into flight. A man of his experience knew the animals’ states by a glance. However, understanding that the creatures were fleeing due to fear only birthed a worse question... What could panic an entire Gargan-herd?

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