A stir in the night.  A torch held the darkness at bay.  A blue flame that wound several feet into the air, causing the shadows to dance.  It shivers.  A crack like settling embers, and a sliver of white scurried about within the flame.

It was there for a brief moment, then a blinding flash filled the area.

Atop a weathered stone foundation, a wheel of black writing surged.  Shining like a star, yet bold as day and night.  Stone Idols places around the foundation cast long shadows.  Baby blue flames lapping at their faces and settling where the eyes would be.

The area began to rippled as something formed in the middle.  Clouds of steam and dust and smoke emerged from the nova, filling the space as the flames guttered.

Then there was silence.  The shadows were muted as the faint moonlight struggled to pierce the clouds.

There was the chirrup of nails on rough stone.  Bit by bit, the form of a person began to stir.  Glancing blearily through the murk.  Smoke crept from the shoulders of a boy and revealed raven hair, sharp blue eyes and a fur collar.

His eyes trained on the ground, where his right arm met with the ground.  He frowned, senses reeling.  His palm plunged into a wave of quicksand, as the stone foundation began to dissolve.

“What?  NO!”

His vision tunneled.  Arms thrown wide open to slow his fall.  A physical force wrapped his body, causing involuntary spasms as he sank into the ground.

It happened in an instant, but each heartbeat felt like reliving hours.  A beast roared, drawing the cry of despair into his maw.  A blade shone in the night.  A bandaged man.  A beam of light.  An encompassing fold.

“Enough!” The boy cocked his fist and buried it into the sand.  Lightning lapped at his arm, and steel cables erupted from the shifting sand.

The ground bucked.  Hardened and split.  Like roots, the tasers burried and wrapped themselves, framing and paralysing the earth.  Speck of black fire appear along their length like measures of a rope.  Bit by bit, they were driven back.  Stonewalled until the boy was bared before an open sky again.

He staggered, then lurched onto hands and knees, “What in the name of haunt was that?”

The electric cables - standing like a bird cage on black writing - fell limp.  A steel chassis, mounted on a leather bracer, retracted the cables with a mechanical whine.  A large box and screen toward his elbow, and a dial over his wrist.

Another vision loomed at the back of his mind.  He suppressed it immediately, using the draw instead to guage his surroundings.  “What is this place?”

The vision fought to make itself known, and the boy committed a meager stream of chakra to pacify it.  The delicate stream of illusions printed into his mind.

A blade of light carved through a stone.  The boy flicked his wrist, setting the machine as an after thought.  Silver metal wrapped around his arm, coating his hand and upper arm like rubber.  Drawing his hand back again he thrust his palm out.  A silver spark winked into existence a moment before a nail of light shot out.  A moment later, a small divet in a nearby tree began to smoke.

He drew both arms to either side and flexed his torso, “Is that all, or is something valid gonna happen?  I, Enigma the mechanist, will not be fouled so easily!”

If only some cocky character stepped out of the woods just then.  It would have been so much easier with a rival to check his ego.

Alas, the treeline remained empty.  Save for the stone figures, Enigma was alone.  So he turned his attention to them instead.  To the medicine wheel traced out on the ground.  And to an abandoned warehouse nearby.

Enigma tilted his head and made his way to it.  Stone foundation met a low roof.  Sunken steps lead to the celler like building.  Wooden boards and wedges in various states of decay held each other in place.  Other than the vines claiming it from the outside in, there was nothing in the way of furniture.  In one corner of the room, he saw an area that had been burned, leaving bare clay and a hole in the roof that nature was well on it’s way to patching.

It was clean, efficient.  Large and symmetric.  A number of boards could have been mistaken for shelves, had it not been for the latrine and storeroom that weren’t so easily disguised.  This was an outpost of sorts, and a temporary one at that.

“For some reason, they didn’t see fit to destroy you altogether.” Enigma’s brow was knit in concentration.

“Welp, all the more reason to make myself at home!”  Needless to say, the solemnity was gone.  Enigma bobbed his head as he took in the space.  Forming more and more definite hand seals until he broke away to find materials.

Using the steel wires, he threshed some vines from the area, opened the hole in the roof and lined it with a bit of extra clay.  Between the river and the nearby stream, whoever built the place really knew how to pick em.

A basket of mushrooms and wild roots ended up in the storeroom, alongside grass, twigs and a spool of cord.

A pile of minced logs crackled beneath the hole in the roof.  Enigma eyed the space filling with smoke warily.

Well that’s a problem for tomorrow me.  These guys apparently went for low profile.  Whatever it was they were hiding from, I hope someone finds me soon.

His stomach rumbled, “Alright now, about those greens.”

The sun rose not long after the boy finished gathering supplies.  Enigma took a brief catnap to celebrate, and had since come to examine the field where he emerged.

There were tracks - Related to the setup he would wager - but strikingly few approaching or leaving the camp.  Even the area around the shelter was old wilderness, and there was no evidence of the stone having been cut or rolled into place.

It was esoterically perfect.  Enigma guaged the stone idols.  They were patterned from the same stone, yet each was unique and detailed.  The work of an artisan.  But how did they get there?

The foundation stone was inexcusable, save for a meticulous effort that went beyond the simple lines.  A person would still have to set foot in the camp, and there were few places where the overgrowth was lower than waist high.

He was starting to contemplate the writing itself when he noticed a damaged branch.  Enigma rose to his feet when he noticed that one of the foremost trees was surrounded in foot traffic.  The branch in question was a few heads higher than an adult, but the more he looked the more signs he found.

The bark on the foremost tree was worn and chipped.  He could seed footprints where certain areas were exposed more than others, and fibers lodged in the bark higher up.  Eventually working up the guts, Enigma scrambled up the trunk and peered into the canopy.  It was like peering through a game trail.

As far as it went, Enigma was convinced that whoever used it spent way more time that the average person gallivanting up there.

“Welp, I’ve got my work cut out for me.  Good thing the river is so close, or I might’ve been the most ill equipped morsel in the region.”