Our world is assailed by its enormous weight of humanity. Enough people going about their lives in reckless, dangerous ways sufficient to bring on the End Times. But life on this planet forms a huge collective Being, and it is not without its resources. The World Ash Tree, or Yggdrasil, carries a titanic flow of power and information between the underworld and the heavens. An avatar of this Ash is in the Catskill mountains, in themselves a source of great spiritual strength. Here we find two men of extraordinary substance working together as skilled harvesters in the forest. They are unknown to the world, and like others of their rare kind, they themselves are without knowledge of who they are. But they are possessed of great strength and uncompromising Justice. These two are called out through Yggdrasil to become warriors in the cause of the Earth. The summons, accepted with free will, takes them to a trial at the edge of mortality, and perhaps beyond. They prove themselves without compromise and move on separately to lives committed to service. But the trial has wrought other, darker changes in each man. A part of each of them stands in shadow. In time, with deep study, one finds a path out of this shade and knows he must share it with his comrade, whom he has not seen or contacted in over half a lifetime. He issues his own summons, and this is also one that cannot be denied.