Crossing Duncan’s Territory and Gaining Entry

Crossing Duncan’s Territory and Gaining Entry is the encounter in which Ava, Lock, and Ezra are intercepted while trying to reach Duncan. Surrounded by a concealed group in his woods, they face threats of violence before Ava proves that she is expected and secures an escort to the house. The passage grants them entry, but the sentries’ numbers and secrecy leave Ava and Lock wondering what Duncan is organizing in the forest.

The Encounter in the Woods

The three travelers are moving through Duncan’s territory when a group emerges from the trees. The men and women appear all around them, dressed in biker-style leather and denim; their apparent familiarity with the forest contrasts with how out of place they look there. The party had not realized it was being followed or surrounded, and the sudden appearance of so many strangers converts a quiet crossing into an ambush.

They try to run, hoping to exploit a moment of surprise, but more faces appear wherever they turn. Lock swings at one attacker and misses; a rangy man tackles him to the ground. Four others encircle Ezra, who responds to the danger with conspicuous amusement, hopping about as they keep their distance rather than engaging him.

Ava refuses to stand aside while Lock is pinned down. She kicks his attacker in the ribs, pulls Lock upright, and sees bruises forming on his cheek and blood around his mouth. Anger gives way to a direct warning: she places herself between Lock and the group and conjures a grapefruit-sized fireball. The flame makes the danger reciprocal. The rangy attacker jumps back, while a broad, scarred man leans close to examine it, and the rest of the group watches him as the apparent leader.

Proving They Are Expected

The scarred man makes clear that the group’s authority comes from its presence on Duncan’s land. He gives the travelers thirty seconds to prove they are the people the sentries have been sent to meet, threatening to break their necks and bury them in a shallow hole if they cannot. Sid adds a threat to hang them from the trees as a bloody warning to other trespassers. The encounter is therefore not simply a mistaken interception: the group is guarding the territory, and it is prepared to kill anyone it cannot identify.

Ava answers with both an explanation and a limit. She says they have come to see Duncan on a friendly visit and asks the leader to send him a photograph, identifying herself as Ava and saying she wants to speak with him about Venus. When he addresses her as “girly,” she lets the fireball shrink to tennis-ball size, then warns that she will melt his boots to his feet if he calls her that again. Her controlled reduction of the flame does not surrender the threat; it makes clear that she can temper her power without yielding her dignity.

A member of the group takes several phone photographs and calls someone Ava assumes is Duncan. After speaking for several minutes, he gives her the phone so she can answer questions meant to establish that she is really herself. Ava supplies a childhood memory that a disguised double could not readily reproduce: when she was nine, Duncan took her to a carnival, where she ate so much junk food that she vomited fluorescent-pink cotton candy. Once she reaches that detail, Duncan tells her she can return the phone. The test turns their shared past into proof of identity, and the sentries’ posture changes as soon as the call confirms who has arrived.

Entry and Lingering Suspicion

Once the caller confirmed Ava’s identity, the group’s manner changed: the leader offered his hand, and Ava shook it after extinguishing the fireball. He explained that the interception had been part of his job. Lock, still bleeding from the fight, asked whether they could now be taken to the house rather than leave more blood in Duncan’s forest. The leader chuckled, ordered most of the group to remain behind, and led the way with Sid and several others staying as guards. The rest disappeared back into the trees so quickly that they seemed never to have been there.

The escort settled the immediate question of whether Ava, Lock, and Ezra would be admitted, but it did not make the encounter feel safe. Sid handed Lock a handkerchief and tried to make peace, while the continued presence of guards suggested that scrutiny would not end at the house. As Lock took Ava’s arm, their exchanged look carried a more troubling question: if Duncan was not building an army, what were all those secretive, violent people doing in his woods? Entry is achieved, but the forest’s hidden force turns arrival into a new uncertainty about Duncan’s preparations.

The Forest as a Guarded Threshold

Before the group appeared, Lock stopped at a sound that Ava could not distinguish from the owl and other evening noises. He heard nothing further either, but his nature-spirit instincts were enough for the others to follow his lead and continue more quietly; Ezra moved through the woods almost like a ghost. The brief pause establishes how little the travelers can read of the territory. Their caution does not reveal the sentries, and the people emerge from the trees only after the trio has already been surrounded.

The encounter makes the forest itself feel like a boundary under active control. The sentries’ leather and denim mark them as conspicuous outsiders to the landscape even as they appear to move through it with ease, melting into the trees and then vanishing back among them. Their presence changes the meaning of reaching Duncan: entry depends not simply on finding his house, but on being recognized by people who can decide whether a visitor is expected or a trespasser. Ava secures passage by proving her identity, yet the guards’ continued escort leaves the boundary only conditionally open.