Combined with rest and easy going travel, the Deep Water had moved at a sedate pace along the path leading to Knowles. Between stops, Heilia had encouraged Akhira to read the grimoire she'd leant her, pointing out certain symbols and teaching her how to read them. Sometime close to the turning point that lead to Knowles, Durg Ja slowed the caravan to a stop.

Unease fed through the group, people whispered, some of the smaller children cried. Finding Akhira, the blue dressed witch called her over, speaking to her quietly.

"There is something wrong." She started, her old wise eyes looking concerned and a little confused. Pointing to the left of them, the woman revealed a spanse of forest, lush and green. It looked quite nice, but there was a sense of fear from the woman. Turning back to Akhira, she shook her head.

"That is hatcher territory. It is usually shrouded in a thick mist, which the hatchers use to hide in. The mist has been there since forever, but now..." She paused, turning to face the forest.

"It's gone." There was a path between the trees, overgrown and requiring a good deal of cutting to get through, but it was a path none the less. There seemed to be a choice to make. Over to their right, the river ran clear and clean, on the other side was Knowles. To their left, the forest beckoned to them, unexplored and forbidden.

There was a place in there once. A haven. A home.

Akhira followed the tribe at her usual pace, keeping a short distance between her and the last members. Every time they stopped, she went straight to Heilia as her motivation for learning was great. And when they moved on, she pressed the grimoire closely to her chest, peeking in from time to see what spells were awaiting her next.

When the caravan stopped, she was just trying to work out a few symbols by herself. Even though she wasn’t that close to the tribe, since reading had slowed her down, children’s cry caught her attention. Slowly she closed the book, her eyes fully focused on the landscape before her. What did they see? It was nothing there; at least she couldn’t see anything dangerous. The witch then hurried to Heilia, who had already called her.



Akhira didn’t understand what was wrong when she looked in the direction the older witch pointed. Nothing, only forest; the kind of forest she would gladly go into. But she said nothing, only continued to gaze at it.



Oh, now she got it! She had heard of hatchers before; no wonder her fellow travellers were scared. But wait... why were they scared if there were no sign of the monsters? That confused her.

“So... we go there now?” she asked Heilia and pointed towards the path.

Deep inside she hoped they would chose the forest path. If she were alone, she would definitely choose that one over the nice and sunny one. Then again, she would probably stay in the forest rather than continue her travel.

“Ah, it sings,” she sighed as she heard a soft wind whistling through the leaves.

The sweet sound of nature; she could spend days just laying between the roots of the tree and listen the wind, the silence, the rain... Being part of that woke in her the same feelings as magic; and when she realized that, she suddenly didn’t know what to do. A second ago, she was certain she would leave the tribe for the forest, but now...
Confused, she looked back at Heilia.

“If you chose the other path, can I go after you later? I promise I return after few days and continue learning.”

There was a sudden silence that rippled through the tribe, as everyone watched Durg Ja dismounted the kint. He stared into the forest for a while, quietly thinking his own private thoughts. After what seemed like forever, he turned around and took in the whole group with a sweeping gaze. There was no spoken words, but a tense atmosphere clouded them as one by one, families began to remount, facing the forest. Helilia looked down at Akhira, a distant and thoughtful look on her face.

"It sings, oes. Do you hear the sound of times fargone, boch?" Gesturing, she pointed to her own blue kint, where the Durg had remounted wordlessly.

"We are going into the forest. Come, ride with us, it would make me feel better." Slowly, the tribe entered the thicket, eyes wide and fields on edge. The roaring silence pressed against them, broken occasionally by the sound of birdsong or rustles in the undergrowth. Deep within the dark green foliage, gentle creatures watched the strange group with curious eyes. No one spoke, not a word.

Akhira's eyes shone as Heilia told her they're taking the forest path. Despite the tribe's discontent, her heart was filled with happiness. She even agreed to travel with Heilia, although she really wanted to explore the forest. Maybe there would be another time for that. For now she had to obey those superior to her.

((I'm so sorry it's so short and late oo''''.))

Slowly, the tribe moved through the forest, all eyes wide, weapons of various sorts sitting ready in hand. Fields were tightly drawn and mothers held their children close. On the Durg's kint, Heilia whispered a prayer to the Ten Gods, anyone who would listen, to keep them safe.

As they pushed through the green of the trees, time passed on. Minutes felt like hours. What seemed like days, the trees finally began to thin, and suddenly, they stopped. Durg Ja looked intently into the undergrowth, wise old eyes searching. To the untrained eye, there was nothing. But to those who could track, there were signs of life. People. There, a broken stick to some, but to others a half a cartwheel. And there, a simple throw of stones, but really, the remains of a fire hearth.

Heilia put a hand on the man's shoulder, squeezing it gently.

"It cannot be...can it?" She said quietly, blue eyes questioning. Durg Ja did not answer.

Despite her age, Aewyn had awoken early as she did every morning to travel through the fringe forests and collect the precious herbs and ingredients she used her salves and elixirs. It was turning out to be a fine day, most of the creatures of the forest were just falling to sleep or on the verge of rising.

But this morning was eerily silent, and the low mist that hung about the greenery did not help the mood. Something was wrong, she could feel it in her bones. Clutching her collecting basket to her hip, she moved carefully between the looming trees deeper into the forest. The sense never left her, instead it continued to grow as she continued collecting various specimens.

It wasn't until she heard the sound of snapping wood that Aewyn took a good look around the forest. Only then did she realize that she didn't recognize it. For her entire life, all forty-one years, she had lived in this forest and as long as she could remember she had walked it's shallow paths every morning. Every inch of it was part of her, but this area was new. Turning back the way she came, she wondered how this was possible, and it dawned on her. The Mist, where was the mist?

Then she heard more sounds, speaking. The echoes came through the forest, but their source could not yet be seen. What could this mean?

Although it is not widely discussed outside the informal society of apothecaries and allied trades, there are a number of diseases, pains, and other conditions for which the current pharmacopoeia has no effective treatment. More surprisingly, many of these complaints are of the most mundane and common sort and as such any apothecary who wishes to maintain a lively a robust custom, and well as provide even the smallest amount of relief to those suffering from everything from the common cold to headaches of the most vicious and unpredictable variety, would do well to keep a large store of brightly colored, foul tasting, but essentially intern 'medicines' about the shop. This practice was, somewhat cautiously it must be confessed, employed of Tzul Droon and over the years he had built of quite a store of seemingly very precises placebo medications.

Bottles of tar-black liquid that smelled of something unidentifiably rancid were one of his staple treatments of that sort, and they showed remarkable effect in soothing, if not the symptoms, then at least the mind of the sufferer. The recipe contained alarmingly over-steeped tea, ginger, honey, resin, along with a liberal dose of asafetida to provide that gag-inducing pungency that so many had come to associate with strong medicine. This he still had in great quantities despite the demand, but he was nearly out of the various brightly colored pills and powders that contained little more than sugar, chalk, various bitter oils, and dye. The red pills (which Droon used for various ailments of the nose and related organs upon which nothing else was known to work) had proven to be the popular placebo this month and so it was no great surprise that he was very low on kermes. The dye could be bought from any of a half dozen pigmentarians but Droon preferred to collect his own. Possibly it could be set down as some strange vestigial desire for the thrill of the hunt, or perhaps it was simply that Droon enjoyed walking through alarmingly dense undergrowth carrying jars, bottles, and a comically absurd collection of nets, lenses and tweezers.

By most standards, and certainly those of the strange and often violent Roek tribe, Droon was no hunter. He had never killed anything larger than a moderate bird (a completely harmless though highly interesting bird which had once been stuffed before being consumed by generations of moths) and usually his murderous impulses were directed to members of the arthropodic world. And so, on that fine, damp, and pleasantly cool morning Droon set out in the general direction of the nearest congregation of oak trees looking for his wily quarry.

Little luck did Droon have in finding the tiny insects he sought, though he had collected a number of excellent mushrooms by way of what he though of as the forests mocking attempt at a consolation prize. It was perhaps a perpetual failing in Droon that when he was searching for minute insects, nondescript but highly interesting plants, or rare birds, he could not see the forest for the trees. Indeed, to be wholly accurate he could not see the forest for the leaves, the twigs, the pale ivory fungi, the beetles, and the tiny swarming gnats; and so it was no great surprise that he had gone further that he had ever been before and was now wholly convinced that the large and imposing oak that stood before him was a new acquaintance. Bidding this tree a quick good morning, he scrambled up into the branches in the hopes of both coming to grips with where he might be and in the moderate hope of finding his scale insects.

It was at this point, with an acorn threatening to thwack him squarely on the nose, that he saw the branch he had just been climbing give way and fall to the ground, making an astonishing racket as it went crashing down.