Titanias found himself screaming warnings as he sped past slower traffic and apologies as he kicked dust and debris into the unassuming faces of those he passed. Still the first leg of his journey went by uneventfully and he quickly got used to the handling of the speeding carriage. It wasn't long before he noticed the main road begin to bend as it shyed away from the dangers of the nearing monster infested forest.

    The map had called it “The Forest of Shifting Trees”, which Titanias assumed meant it would be infested with treants. Map makers and explorers generally lacked imagination and creativity and preferred to name their discoveries in a more literal sense. Treants were big and slow moving creatures that posed little danger as long as one could stay clear of their slowly swinging branches. Titanias did not let this knowledge pacify him though, having adventured all around the kingdom researching magic to help break his family's curse, he knew that whenever there was one monster there was three; the main monster, one who feeds on the main monster, and one that the main monster feeds on.

    As the diverting path came into sight, Titanias gently pulled the reins to signal the horses to turn and turn they did, in a graceful sweeping arch. What they didn't do was slow down. The carriage followed the intrados of the horses path as best it could but once it passed the curves centroid the back wheels began to lose traction and drift out from beneath. Titanias felt himself losing control of the carriage and tensed all over causing his knuckles to turn white with the fierceness with which he clutched the reins.

     Misreading the feeling of their Coachman’s tightening of the reins, the horses increased their stride causing the artifacts that they wore to go up a gear. The burst of speed dragged the carriage back into line behind the horses with an sudden swaying that resembled the cracking of a whip.

    Rubbing his neck to check for whiplash, Titanias realized something. Aisen had neglected to tell him exactly how he was supposed to stop.

    The forest was much more vast than the small blip on the map had insinuated and much more dark. The further he sped beneath the thick canopy of trees the more Titanias' sense of foreboding increased.

    It wasn't long before he saw his first monster. A treant stood directly in the center of the seldom used forest rode. Treants, as their name suggest, are monsters in the form of trees. They usually ate whatever was unlucky enough to crawl into its branches and attacked with thick bundles of its stems whatever touched its roots. Luckily for Titanias this Treant wasn't fully grown, which left space on either side to go by. Titanias calmly pulled the carriage to the left and passed it like the many slow moving carts he'd crossed on the main road.

    The second monster he came across was a pack of lolies. Lolies were hound like monsters with acidic saliva. They moved through the forest with their tongues hanging out of their dopey faces looking for their favorite treats, treants, though they weren't particularly picky on their diet. Despite their nonthreatening demeanor, they were extremely dangerous. One lick from their acidic tongues could destroy non magical armor, and a pack could dissolve a fully grown Treant in a matter of minutes.

    They proved to be nothing more than yelping speed bumps to the armored carriage, though. Titanias winced at the sickening crunch they made as he barreled through the pack.  

    Titanias was just starting to relax, judging that the rate at which he was traveling had probably carried him through most of the Forest of Shifting Trees, when he heard a discernable twang of a wire snapping.

    “What the hell was that?* He thought to himself as he looked behind him. He saw a broken metal cord flying in air, completely out of place in the wilderness he found himself in. He realized instantly that a trap had been triggered and silently thanked lady Aisen for armor plating on the legs of the horses as any other steed would have been amputated by the razor wire.  

    Titanias knew instantly what had happened. Aisen was right. The thieves had come.