Rebel Without a Pater
Alderic's apprentice Mot gets in trouble again, and Randolph and Rhys face dreadful peril to get him back out.
Season: Spring 1208
An enchanted bird arrived at the covenant with news for Godwyn. Alderic's apprentice Mot had run away and was missing. Godwyn sent Randolph with his faerie hound Amad´n and the young grog Rhys. They departed on horseback and within a few days had found the village where Mot was last seen.
The villagers there said Mot was a thief and had stolen food and a horse. They said he was probably dead because he went into the enchanted forest, and people who go there never come out.
Rhys chatted up an old woman in the village who told him the story of the enchanted forest. Many years ago, in her grandmother's time, the king (probably William II) sent laborers in to the forest to establish a logging camp. They cut a few trees then disappeared. So the king sent men-at-arms to find them. The men-at-arms never came out. Then the king sent a strong group knights into the forest. The knights never came out. Since then, everyone has been terrified of the place.
Except Mot. He didn't know anything about the story, and so blundered right into the forest to get away from the mobs of angry villagers that tend to form wherever he goes.
The forest was dark and tangled yet it seemed as if there were a faint path. Straying off the path was awful, as Rhys and Randolph found out: the going was very hard through the thick, uncut growth and the path was magical and not at all easy to find again.
They stumbled across the skeleton of a knight, which came to life and attacked! Rhys thought this was because the forest spirits were angry at him trying to blaze a trail, but he later found out the skeletons just try to murder everyone they encounter.
After many hours they found Mot's dead horse, partly butchered. Not long after, they found Mot, thirsty, exhausted, and terrified. He had been hunted by skeletons for three days and they had finally killed his stolen horse. Mot explained he had run away because Alderic is "a jerk, and stupid."
Rhys couldn't help but exclaim, "Look who's talking!"
Rhys and Randolph tried to make camp and sleep in shifts. Mot's shift only lasted about an hour so it was tough for the grogs to make it all night in just two shifts, but they didn't have to. They got interrupted by a skeleton attack.
At dawn, they found the magic trail again and led their remaining horses along it. Rhys surmised they were in a regio, having heard Hywel gushing about regiones years ago. Mot explained a little about what that meant. Rhys and Mot enjoyed discussing mystical and arcane matters and the animosity between them seemed to ease.
They apparently passed through to the next level of the regio because the forest got more open and the trees more majestic. Then they came upon the ancient remnants of the logging camp. Beyond stood a huge oak tree, whose trunk was twenty feet in diameter. A deep, commanding voice issued from the other side of the tree. Walking around, the grogs and apprentice saw the far side of the tree seemed carved into the shape of a twelve-foot-tall man, seated on a thrones. It was this man who spoke.
The tree-spirit was imperious and threatening. Talking to it only led to a fight. Skeletons came shambling out of the woods, two at a time -- but they kept coming.
During the fight, Randolph's faerie hound, Amadan, was slain by a lucky blow.
It became clear that the skeletons would keep coming and soon overwhelm the characters. They had to go after the tree. Randolph climbed up it and rammed his sword into the wooden man, with some small effect. Mot used a spell to get his staff burning with a fierce and super-hot flame, with which he started charring the tree. Meanwhile, Rhys held off the skeletons single-handed.
Rhys got up to fighting seven skeletons at once and managed to hold his own! Then one of them pinned him against the tree, which by then had caught fire. That was too much for Rhys, who as a boy had seen his parents incinerated by a fire drake and survived by hiding in their burning house. He panicked because of the fire.
Randolph and Mot managed to fight their way past the skeletons and Rhys broke free and caught up to them. They quickly mounted their horses -- Mot's Gift did not seem to bother the beasts -- and rode off to a safe distance while the tree burned.
After a time, whatever enchantment lay over the place was broken and the two grogs and the apprentice rode out of the mundane level of the regio, with the wood burning behind them.
Alderic sent gifts to the grogs in gratitude for saving his apprentice.