Sample for an Article on Magic and Technology in the Redwall World.
Written for the Sentinels of Mossflower circa Winter 1999.

The leaves rustled above the heads of Shadow De Vulpes and Tayla Firehue. They were walking, not particularly conscious of one another, towards the main clearing of the newly strengthened Sentinels boot camp until Tayla spoke. 
"Did you hear that?" 
De Vulpes looked up, startled. "Sorry? What? I was daydreaming. If that was why I saw some pillock with a rifle and in full battle armour standing in front of me..." She trailed off into incoherent mumbling, evidently confused about something.
"Say again?" Tayla asked, her face showing bewilderment and awkwardness running through her mind at the idea of making friends with a near stranger.
"Jumping ahead on the conversation a little, aren't I?" grinned De Vulpes sheepishly, almost frightened it seemed.
"Aye, you are! I couldn't make any sense of what you just said," Tayla returned the smile, trying to show a willingness to be friends. "And I doubt you could either." 
"You're right," Shadow continued in her polished accent, "I don't know what came over me... I just saw it. Sorry, I think 'it' was a he," They had reached the clearing and were now continuing towards the leader's tent. 
"Tell you what," Firehue confided, breaking course and heading for an obscure corner of the encampment, "If 'it' was a he then I'd better get whatshisface, Yaves, I think it is? Anyway, I'd better get him to do some hypnotherapy on you. That is, if you'd like it?" she trailed off under Shadow's stern gaze. 
"Actually, that might be useful," mused De Vulpes, after an initial shock of irritation. "He could get these visions out of my system." 
"Other visions?" asked Tayla, confused and frankly worried. If hallucinations were the deed of the day, what would come next?
"Yes, other visions. Haven't I told anyone about them? I keep seeing him standing there, always pointin' some way or the other..." 
"We'd better get you to Yaves right away." 
"Oh no, I'm not going to the camp sanatorium yet," De Vulpes protested, "I'm staying in the sane part of this world for now!" 
"You daft old battleaxe!" laughed Tayla Firehue, "He won't stick you in a loony bin! He'll just help you to focus your mind on the image of this man and then he'll tell you what the visions are all about! Or something like that. I don't really go for that sort of thing myself." 
"Good." said the daft old battleaxe. "I haven't gone mad yet." 

"What we have here is a case of spiritual intervention." Yaves whispered to Tayla. "Now, Shadow, I want you to delve deeper into the vision. Focus on the man’s hand. Now, where was this vision of yours pointing?"
"Toward the mountain. Always toward the mountain." De Vulpes replied in a faraway tone. 
"Good!" Yaves smiled. "Now, can you concentrate on the mountain?"
"Yes." Shadow looked concerned. 
"Okay. I want you to walk to the mountain and tell us what you see on the way there." 
"I’m walking - no, it’s almost as though I was running, I’m moving so fast. The mountain’s coming up in front of me now. I’ve just entered a huge cloud of mist, and very thick mist at that." Suddenly, De Vulpes flew into catatonia, almost as if trying to get something off her. Yaves dashed around the table in the middle to supress her then help her up. 
"What happened?" Tayla asked, concernedly. There was quite a commotion building up outside now, and Yaves had to shout to be heard. 
"She’s suffering from neural shock! We have to get her out of here now!" 
Suddenly, a booming voice came from outside. "Make passage! Make way, you irritating people, or I’ll..." The threat of their friend and only other survivor from the old days, Lilac Blacktip, quietened everyone outside immediately, ‘til only a few murmurers and whisperers were left. She entered the tent. 
"We have to get her to a paramedic tent now," Yaves spoke quietly. "or she may die." 
"What exactly happened, anyway?" Lilac asked as they carried Shadow out of the hypnotherapist’s tent and towards the centre of the camp. 
"The hypnosis went wrong. I’m not sure what exactly happened, but it involved the mist around the eastern mountain." 
"The eastern mountain?" 
"Yes," Allinsor answered as they came to the paramedic tent. "She keeps having this vison of a strange man - I fear it is Dylan Sable." 
"He’s dead!" Lilac looked puzzled. 
"What about his other title?" asked Tayla. "‘Spirit Runner’, wasn’t it?" 
"That’s the ground I was thinking along." Yaves said, matter-of-factly. "Why else would he have the title? In fact, I sometimes suspect he has become our guardian spirit." They were in the tent now, and had fixed the oxygen mask over Shadow’s head. 
"Are you serious?" Lilac thought what this would imply for the whole camp. Then she realised she had read thousands of books, and had come across situations just like this several times in any work of fiction. Star Trek especially. 
"Perfectly." 
Shadow choked and spluttered. She coughed and sat up on the stretcher. The surprisingly firm hand of Yaves suppressed her from getting up. "You’ve just been in neural shock. Stay there for a while. And, keep the mask on. You might go into it again if you haven’t got enough oxygen. As I was saying, I’m perfectly serious, yes." 
"How is it possible?" Tayla pondered aloud. 
"Sable met a peaceful end, after a lifetime of fighting and bloodshed, did he not?" 
"Aye, carry on." Tayla was impatient for a coherent answer. 
"Well, the spirit which can conquer its inner feelings is the most valuable part of the community, is that not true?" 
"Yes..." 
"Well then! Dylan’s spirit was that of a noble warrior, and with extensions into the ethereal world, well, he must have been the most powerful creature imaginable in those days." 
"Before the advent of gunpowder and the technological boom that followed it." Tayla pointed out vehemently. 
"True, but don’t forget, his spirit did have a rifle. I think he’s managed to find a substitute for gunpowder in the ethereal world." 
"It’s possible..." 
"I see him again!" De Vulpes looked astonished, as she stared at the back wall of the tent. She gasped, as another familiar luminescent figure appeard by the Spirit Runner. "Errrm... I think you should know that you’ve just appeared by his side, Yav! You’re handing him something... You’ve gone! Just like that! Dylan’s fading away... He’s gone too." 
All present were staring at the back of the tent, when suddenly... 
"Silverstone, I need you." 
With a gasp, the creatures in the tent whirled around, only to see the Spirit Runner as clear as day, standing with his hand leaning on Shadow’s stretcher. His face was sombre, etched with worry and grief. 
"Me? Why?" 
"The logical squirrel as ever, Silverstone. It will take some explaining. I shall start at the beginning. As I am now, I have not been given the secret of gunpowder and automation yet by you. In time, you will bring this secret to me using a process called the Kulik process, transmit your mind into the ethereal realm along with a pouch of gunpowder and a trigger mechanism. The device is to be found in the tombs of the house Canos from the Thorn wars. There is, however, a problem..." 

Lilac whacked herself on the side of the head, to see if it made any sense then. "What?" 

"What do we need to run this thing?" They stared at the device before them. A slab of marble, above which hung a triple-faceted series of mirrors. 
"Come through here! They’ve sent back the temporal focus device!" 
"The temporal focus device?" Yaves asked. "What the hell does that mean?" 
"Yes," replied Sablefur. "It will be one of the greatest creations of goodbeast kind. It focuses time from different periods into a small area, giving the creature there more time to say, make a ‘split-second decision’." 
"So, it's a weird piece of techie gubbins. How do we get it to work?" Tayla was inquisitive, as ever. 
"We clean it. We must evict the grime of centuries from the hydroxylate synthesis inverters, devices which effectively create energy from the air around them." 
"So all we need’s this!" Tayla produced a cloth from some hidden pouch. "And what exactly are 'Hydroxwate sythesis Everters', anyway?" 
"Excellent." Dylan smiled, ignoring Tayla's question. 
A rustling noise came from the next chamber in the labyrinth. Gale Stormdancer’s head popped around the doorway. "Firehue? Yaves? My god, even Blacktip and De Vulpes! I thought you were long dead!" 
"We thought the same of you, my friend!" The Spirit Runner looked at her, inquisitively. 
"Oh, now I know you’re dead. You’re just a hallucination." 
"I assure you, I am not." Dylan grinned. "I’ve come back from the dead, thanks to this old faithful." He patted the flatbed. Tayla had finished cleaning them now. "Lie on it, Yaves!" Sablefur lay down on one of the two flatbeds. Yaves lay on the other. There was a hum, and the devices started working. "Remember, if the other device starts humming, it’s overloading." The bodies on them looked vacant, almost dead. But not quite. 
The wolf’s and the squirrel’s bodies lay on the benches under the glowing blue lights, spirits somewhere beyond the veil. The temporal focus device began humming, and dust began to fall from the ceiling as a fine powder. 
Tayla couldn't hear a thing as the humming grew to a painful pitch and resonated through the cave. Small slabs of stone began to fall from the ceiling now, and one knocked Lilac out. 
The temporal focus device began to glow a deadly blue. It was going into overload, rather typical of this sort of situation Tayla thought. Then she remembered what the hero or heroine always did in the stories, and that was throw themselves at the humming thing to try and turn it off. Okay, she thought. If this is going to be like a story, I may as well do what I should. She motioned to De Vulpes, who reached the focus device with a grin on her face. All that remained was to press the button marked ‘Stop’ to induce the self-inversion process, or whatever this particular chunk of silicon was actually meant to do. With what she thought was the correct dramatic presence of mind, she threw herself at the machine. As she had predicted, time seemed to slow down and she eventually managed to reach out and slam her hand down on the button. 

A great flash of light: white, milky, moonlight amplified a thousand times over and coupled with a silence so graceful it induced tears in the eyes.... 

"I see him again!" De Vulpes looked astonished, as she stared at the back wall of the tent. She gasped, as another familiar luminescent figure appeared by the Spirit Runner. "Errrm... I think you should know that you’ve just appeared by his side, Yav! You’re handing him something... You’ve gone! Just like that! Dylan’s fading away... He’s gone too." 
All present were staring at the back of the tent. 
Yaves grinned, then thought. If only the author wasn't so predictable, that would have been exciting.