No, Not Really

Your first thought of the forest is creepy. It's all cool and all with the moon and star light shining through the giant pine branches. But its the mist that is making everything just plain out creepy. Making shapes in the dark spots and long shadows in the light parts, even Tina and Darrel agree on this one thing. "Hey Darrel," he grunts that he hears. "This is really creepy right?" He grunts again is a yes, sort of.

After that wonderful conversation between them, they continue to ride through the forest looking for Ron. A little while into the search Darrel picks up the tracks of Ron's horse. It is heading straight to the middle of the forest.

As the three of you ride along the path less floor you see all kinds of wonderful things. You see a giant tree with a giant hole in it, a pine tree growing around a couple of boulders, and a downed hollow tree that you could walk through right. You cross a stream so sparkly and crystal clear that you can see moonstones shining in the stream bed and the coy fish chasing each other in the currents.

Finally at what seems like hours of you finding new wonders to marvel at, the group come across your first encounter in the first with other monsters, kinda. The heroes get their horses across the stream and see a pack of ents. Or are they called a horde. Maybe a Flock. Anyways they’re no real ents, more like stumps with arms, legs, and what looks like a mouth with wooden teeth. They all huddle in a semi circle around you. The horses all instinctually start to back up, but more come flooding behind you across the stream.

"Pubbles, I command you to destroy them!" Tina frantically tells you. You try to hold on to her, but she keeps push and pulling you off the horse. "Damn it Pebbles this isn’t the time." She yells in your face. Still refusing to obey your master she keeps trying to pry you off her arm that you are grabbing on for dear life. “If you keep doing this there will be no more cuddles.” Tina sure is in a mood, but you practically live off cuddles so you go withy he best option you have. You fall off the horse and waddle as fast as you can at the bastards.

You fire off a fist at a monster's head, and while running at the enemy you regrow a spike in your hands place. You jab your spike at the monsters face region and you fire off your other hand at another's ones face. While thinking what to make next when you shoot out your spike and regrow a fist, your body is suddenly flying back from a hit from below. You land on your back and you quickly roll up on your side and see what hit you. Turns out what hit you was a bunch of roots that shot out of the ground. They slowly retracted and all but a couple charge you. As you back up thinking of a strategy, you count that there around 9 ents attacking and 4 slightly smaller ones staying back. Thinking on the fly you shoot one of your spike at one of the ents legs hoping to slow it down or stop it’s movemnt entirely. Turns out the ents are pretty dumb and fragile. As the spike is fly at the lead ent it doesn’t even try to dodge it. It just takes the damage like a champ or in this case a loser. The ents leg breaks off and it trips over it’s own motion. All the other ones start to fall over other like dominoes. They all land in a big pile of wood and now taking a closer look at the wounds of the enemy you can see that on the inside they are all rotting wood.

Seeing all of them tripped up you turn around at your summoner and give her a big thumbs up with you hand and regrow another hand with its own thumb sticking up. You hear Tina give a little squeal of excitement for you as you just conquered your first battle. Turning around you see most of the rotten ents have been turn into xp for you and your group. Not that the heroes needed it or anything but heroes are pretty greedy, that you learned from Lumpy when he was explaining things to you. Going over and finishing the few monster left you can feel the xp at the tip of your xp bar ready to give you another level. Going over to the last ent you hear the monster whisper something.

“Alan Akbark.”

And the world went black as you flew off into the bushes of the forest with just one question in your mind...