The Misty Woods

Karath took a small moment to catch his breath.
"It's gone," he declared as he rose confidently from his slight exhausted slouch, gazing into the mist as though to confirm their success. He felt thankful his prior knowledge of the Misty Woods contributed to a successful escape plan and now needed to brief his party on the specific details.
"These woods are magical," he said, now adopting his more serious tone as he briefed his party. "Many have entered and few have returned. If you get lost, then you're lost for the duration of your time here. If you lose sight or perception of something or someone...they're lost for good. There is no rejoining here, so if you find yourself alone...it will be that way until you get out."

Karath paused to make sure everyone was listening.

"This is why we escaped those beasts. They lost sight of us, regardless of how close behind the one chasing us was. And now... we are all safe. You will encounter nothing else save for yourselves, and time will stand still here. In some sense, there is no better sanctuary than this place."
Karath handed Skarlet a nondescript, small burlap bag. Investigation or use will reveal it to be a magical bag of holding.
"We're here to collect a special ingredient that can only be found in these woods. You can walk forever here and the woods will just continue. Soon we will see colorful mushrooms, glowing and slightly shiny. We need to pick as many of these as we have patience for."
He then took out his potion vial.
"We'll be more effective if we split up. Drink this potion when patience runs thin, and it should warp you back to the Midnight Sun. Otherwise... the only way out of here is to fall asleep or lose perception...and when you wake up, there's no telling where you'll end up. But you'll end up somewhere and it won't be here. This is why people disappear and why this ingredient is worth a fortune. Its that fortune that will get our ship back in order. Kane, you go with Skarlet. Abby and I will go another way. We'll all meet back at the Midnight Sun after the harvest."

Abby smiled when she heard of Karath his decision to split them up together. Seems like she did have had some effect on him in the two days they had been together. She was pleased.
"I will see you guys at the midnight sun." she said as she said her goodbyes to Kane and Skarlet before heading off with Karath. She soon clung herself to his arm, walking close next to him. "What? You just said we should not get lost, right?" she said with a devious smile on her face.

Once they had walked a small bit away she rethought the battle with the beast from before. Her face looking a lot more serious now. "It seems that my eye holds a lot more power then I thought it did." she started. "I used to think it was a burden since I could not control it. No matter how interesting it sounds, it ain't fun to see people naked all the time, or walk into a washline because you simply didn't see the fabric hanging down from it." She paused and turned to Karath. "I could clearly see where that thing was. I could see the attacks hit him clearly after I removed my eyepatch and saw through the illusion that it had created for us. What does that mean? What exactly is this eye and why do I have it? I know I was born with it, but noone has ever explained to me how or why I got it."

"Alright, I'll get too work then" Kane followed behind Scarlet as they went off deeper into the woods. As they set off Kane noticed the Mana that seemed to flow abundantly through the air and thought for a moment if there were someway to harness it. First to test the forest he cast a very simple spell, nothing more than a small floating magical light.

The only interference would be the unexpected abundance of energy. Eloria, Kaylie, and Cael would find their way safely out of the woods and to their destination.

She had been running.

Not from something, of course, but just... running.

It helped her to think, and it helped her to concentrate. She enjoyed the natural and unexpected obstacles that would sometimes obscure her way, making her agile body leap and bound over fallen logs and tumbled boulders.

She began to slow down, from a run to a jog, from a jog to a brisk walk... and then she stopped.

Her chest was rising and falling with her efforts, and her blue eyes seemed to refocus. Mist swirled around her, and she turned to look back the way she'd come (for elves have an uncanny sense of rural direction, after all) and found that she recognized...

... nothing.

She turned slowly around, trying to catch a glimpse of anything... The tilt of the land, the position of branches, the natural fall of stones...

... But there was nothing.

"Strange," she said to herself. Smoothly flipping a blade into her hand, the elf approached the thick trunk of the tree and lifted a hand to touch its bark.

If she could figure out what type of armor the tree kept on itself, she could figure out what weather and creatures she should expect in the area. For now, all she wanted to do was touch the tree, but if by simply looking she could not figure it, then she would try taking a specimen.

Dead. Dead, but not brittle, so it could not be dead all the way through. She lifted her knife in her hand and began to try and take a sample, in the way a learned herbologist might.

She was a Sylvelain elf, after all, and they had a deep respect of nature and its mysteries.