The Dark Wood

Roxanne wandered through the woods, having somehow become separated from her companions. They'd planned out everything so well, how had they all gotten lost? Oh well, no sense dwelling on the past. Perhaps she'd run into them, perhaps not. What mattered now as following the compass and getting to the goal. She stopped, sitting down under an elm tree to let her compass reset and point her in the right direction. As she sat, she wondered why she hadn't run into any monsters so far. Weren't these deep woods supposed to be full of dangerous things, she mused? Still, no sense in jinxing it. Perhaps she was just lucky.

Roxanne turned at the sound of someone approaching, reaching for her sword. However, she soon realized who it was and put the blade away. She deftly sidestepped the clumsy mage as he fell into the tree, sighing. Hopefully she hadn't made a mistake in teaming up with this klutz, she thought. Still, as long as he'd be able to get them out, it would all be worth it. She sighed, leaning against a tree and shaking her head.

"I don't know where the others are, Nomad. I got separated from them, just like you did. We'd best get moving, though. The other parties must already be on their way to the meteorites, and we can't afford to waste any time looking for them."

Watching as the mage healed his face, Roxanne frowned. That vine wasn't exactly hidden, how had Nomad tripped over it? He wasn't particularly quiet moving through the brush, either. The man was about as stealthy and graceful as a boulder falling off a mountain.

"Also...have you ever been outside in the woods before? You've got to be more careful, who knows what might be looking to eat us out here?"

Roxanne nodded, shuddering at the thought of a man-eating plant. She'd always hated seeing the small bug-eaters that her various family members occasionally brought home. They all seemed so unnatural, like little abominations. Who knew what a huge one would be like? Glancing down at her compass, she was relieved to find that it had settled on a direction.

"Alright, let's go this way. I don't like these woods one bit, so the sooner we get out of here the better. It's not the bears that I'm worried about here. Five times a meteorite's weight in gold is quite a bit of gold, and I wouldn't put it past the other hunters to try and get rid of the competition."

She slung her bow off her back, nocking an arrow to the string and glancing around. What if there was something or someone watching them now, just waiting to pounce? She didn't want to be caught unawares. Besides, in case something tasty wandered by, she wanted to be able to skewer it before it ran away.

Nomad would feel something, for lack of a better word, "off" as he gathered magic. Something about this place. Its atmosphere is steeped in magic. It roils, refusing to be controlled, struggling to get free of him, before uneasily settling down.

As the party advances, they first encounter an odd looking type of scrub tree. Its leaves are a bright yellow, and profoundly misshapen. Closer inspection reveals that they look almost identical to the common honeybee, detailed down so perfectly as to be easily mistaken. But there are no bees here. The leaves are motionless and silent. The short trees slowly sway in the breeze. It is quiet.

The silence persists as they move deeper, oppressive. The more malleable will find themselves stepping lightly, to erase the sound of their footsteps. Walking more slowly now, so as not to disturb the sacred sound of nothing pervading the forest. Come. Have a seat. Cease this pointless motion. This irritating cycle of breath. Quiet now, your heartbeat disturbs this perfect moment.

Nomad grumbled in response. "Even the magic is agitated." The magic still within him, he decided to grow it rather than summon more from the area around him. Something had disturbed the forest. Sadly he couldn't begin to guess what. "We should press on, with luck we'll avoid whatever is causing this."

Nomad scowled. Something was clearly amiss and while he wouldn't fall prey to it so easily his companion might. He moved his power to his eyes, they shined red and a magic circle appeared before him.

As Nomad begins to shape the spell, the magic he is channeling suddenly begins to writhe. Like a living thing, it lashes out against his control, and the spell begins to destabilize. Worse still, more magic begins to pour into him from outside. The forest is intent on reclaiming what was taken. It refuses to be controlled. More and more, if floods him without end, overwhelming his already shaky control. Some of this feeds into the already unstable spell. His vision fills with strobing, flaring colors. They flash brighter and brighter, etching patterns into his retinas. His eyes are closed, but they do nothing to prevent the ever brighter, ever faster barrage of color. It has been only a second or two, but his eyes are screaming. His eyes are burning! Then the spell fails entirely, a final flare of raw color filling his vision, before his eyes are mercifully plunged into blindness.

The short term means blindness, although he will recover given a few hours of rest.

The backlash from this might be enough to snap Roxanne from her reverie. The silence abates, like a dam breaking, the noise pours back into the wood. The slightest sound is painfully loud. The singing vanishes, drowned out by the noise. Roxanne knows, somehow, that she will never hear it again.

Roxanne gasped, almost choking on her sudden intake of air. It felt as though she'd been woken violently from a deep sleep, like somebody had thrown a bucket of water over her. What was going on? What had just happened? It was as though she'd been walking through a heavy fog and hadn't noticed it. The sudden rush of noise felt unbearable after the silence, and Nomad's sudden predicament didn't help.

"B-blind? What do you mean, blind? You really can't see? How did that happen? You can't possibly go on then, can you? You'd best head back, I'll go on on my own..."

Now what, though? How was she supposed to make it through the woods without the help of a mage? How was she going to make it out of here?

"I mean, unless you think you can continue, somehow...I don't really know how mages do things."

Roxanne frowned. She didn't want the mage to get hurt, but it would certainly be difficult to make it through the forest on her own. Besides, she had the feeling that Nomad would be a bit more competent than he was letting on. A lightning bolt could certainly come in handy, even if it was aimed blindly. Perhaps a little teamwork would be in order, but she could certainly handle that.

"Let's keep going, then. Together. You can still teleport, right? If things ever get too bad, you can always warp away. It's a good thing we haven't run into any monsters yet, though I'm sure we'll see one soon."