The Night in the High Solar

Night settled over the Blackwood Redoubt with a peaceful, majestic stillness that seemed to heal the ancient scars of the mountain. Outside the fortress, the newly restored western river roared with a steady, rhythmic cadence through the canyon, its waters reflecting the diamond radiance of a million stars scattered across the clear alpine sky. In the vast allied encampment surrounding the dry moat, sixty thousand campfires flickered like a sea…