,, Dear Freyan,

I need your help! Bandits attacked our camp weeks ago. This is the first time I could write you since. Even as we put up a fight to protect our own, we were out numbered. They took most of our valuables. High skies! Most of us barely escaped with our lives, and the other didn't… just didn't.

Now we are stranded near a town called Ashmound, but without money the folks here not really welcoming. And we are not equipped for a journey home. I sent word to the Order, yet nothing ever since. Now I don't know who else to trust than you. I have the suspicion that one of our own has betrayed us.

Please Freyan… If we couldn't meet at the town, I'll be waiting at the statue of the Weeping Driad. It's not far from the town in the forest.

Sisy”

Freyan didn't think for long before deciding to hurry to aid Sisindra. He gathered enough money for the journey both ways, and hired bodyguards before leaving the ‘civilized’ territories. Now he knew where he had to go he could look it up. Frankly it was rather easy. Ashmound was an official town in the Northern Forest. It was secluded, and far from anywhere else, but knowing where to search for it on the map, it was there.

Freyan was surely used to traveling by now. But as he was leaving behind first the cities, than even the smallest villages, he felt his courage leaving him like a sigh. It only took two days traveling in the wilderness. And as they were getting closer to the Northern Forests it got even worse. The land became grueling. There was a reason, why weren't any roads here. Thick vegetation, small hills, muddy terrain, and even swamps changed each other from time to time. Even to the point, when they couldn't keep following the shortest route. At that time changing directions, and continuing by ship from the nearest coast was an idea everyone welcomed with rejoice. Freyan tried to stay strong. He thought he at least looked calm, but his companions, knew it better. They tried to tease him as little as they could, but by the time they reached Ashmound he looked pale as moon at the time of witching hour.

The first thing Freyan noticed arriving to Ashmound, beside of the even thicker forest everywhere, that Sisindra was right, the locals were inhospitable. Just as she wrote. Not as if they weren't willing to help at all, but even than they had that look in their eyes. Suspicion and doubt. They felt it, were ever they went. Not to mention the warning surprise of the man they asked about the Weeping Driad. Of course Freyan didn't noticed it. But his guards did.

It was true, Sisindra and the her team was here, but as they could gather they went missing almost as long ago as Freyan stopped receiving the letters.

Freyan's guards decided to accompany him to the Weeping Driad in broad daylight. The tree of them couldn't say that he didn't paid well. And they were ones to see a job through. But then it was more than time to go back home.

Of course it was dusk, when they found the ‘statue’. The Weeping Driad was living tree intertwined with tendrils in a huge shape of a dancing woman. Her face was a still image of deep sorrow. There was nothing they could do, but to set up camp.

It was true, Maxwell, the muscle of the group would’ve rather camped farther from the ‘creepy lady tree’, but Freyan wouldn't budge on the topic. Dylan, the hedgemage, couldn't care less as he put up the defensive wards around the campsite. And Gus’, the shadiest looking of them all, just checked his weapons again, and started to work on the camp.

Maxwell was the first to take guard duty, as the others settled in to sleep after dark. But he didn’t have the time to warn the others. The loud snapping sound of Dylan’s wards shattering wake up everybody in no time. Then the light of the campfire went out in an instant. All this took only seconds, and seconds after that a gargling sound came from where Dylan should’ve been. It wasn’t loud, but it sounded like if someone was trying to breath underwater, and it was nasty. There were no shouts in this battle. If it could be called that. Shadows were moving, what Freyan barely could see and barely could understand what was going on. Until one of the shadows tossed him away landing next to a tree. He though all his bones broken into small pieces at that moment. It was just a second, as he felt someone lifting him up by his throat, than he saw a siluette of a face with a pair eyes gleaming at him. He wanted to shout, but he was too afraid to do that. Probably even for that short time, when he felt the force lifting from his throat. Then was only the pain. Above his whole body aching he felt as if as some kind of beast, like wolf, would’ve bit him in the neck. Life was slipping away from him, he was sure of it. Probably the others were dying or already dead too…

Last thing he remembered, was drowning… in blood.