Act Three: Who Hunts The Huntsman

The training camp is far from the roads and beaten tracks, flanked by dense forest and sudden sharp drops splattered with granite spurs and dusted with heathers. The non-magical forestry service get diverted at the three mile point by a series of repelling charms. Eight hundred yards beyond that, the stronger magical defences begin, buried distraction curses and notice-me-not charms and quick-nature wards work to turn every inward path into brambles and thickets for the unauthorised visitors. Another mile in, the ground rising the whole way, the traps are just that: disillusioned bushes to distract from the trip wires and toothed springs and spike pits that have been disguised, not with magic, but grass and leaves and fallen branches. A mile after that, the fortifications begin, the bunkers and the hides and the lookout points. Only the last half mile or so up to the cabin is clear, but this too is a kind of trap; every direct approach is visible to the Hunters working there, assuming there are people on lookout.

But nobody is, of course. Not now. Not today. Not when it's a full moon night. Not when they're all getting ready for the hunt, secure in the knowledge that nobody outside their society has ever been told about this place, that nobody has even hints that it might exist, so how would anyone even begin to look for it? The defenses are there for practice and theatre, that's all. They're not necessary, not really. They all know it, in their hearts, in their minds, in their bones, in their history. True safety lies in knowing the threat, the werewolves, and knowing how to deal with it, with poison and silver and fire and righteous fury.

So not one person sees the sudden shift in the sky as the anti-apparation ward blooms and rolls down over them.