Tales from The Circle

[DeputyDog]

The druid looked up at the squirrel above her in irritation, mentally telling it to stop babbling and tell her if indeed this is where the robed ones had traveled. The tiny creature chattered on, pausing to nibble at an unfortunate walnut that had failed to hide itself well enough. She nodded her head. Good enough. Scaling back down the tree and moving slowly eastward, she finally found what she was looking for: the trail.

Three days later: The druid had found the arcanists' camp. As she looked upon it from above, she felt her blood boil – they were but a few days march from the portal that the Circle's Council had deactivated a year ago, and judging by their slow, plodding course, ignorantly trampling precious foliage, that was exactly where they were headed. She gritted her teeth and sneered in anger, vowing to teach them a lesson about life.

Two days later: The high mage yelled in frustration at one of his apprentices, "Quiet, you idiot! Do you want to bring the entire Circle down on us?" The apprentice, most uncooperatively, continued moaning in his sleep, then awoke with a scream. With a sigh, the high mage mentally prepared another full set of Silence spells for the next day's march.

Another apprentice, sitting nearby and not even bothering with an attempt at sleep, looked back down into his journal, his hand shaking, and slowly continued to write: "Haven't gotten any sleep in two nights…our progress has slowed to a crawl. Half the apprentices have fallen deathly ill with some unexplainable disease…We had to knock out one of the other apprentices last night…he woke up in a daze and thought he was in battle…almost killed one of his friends with a flame arrow." Looking up through the thick forest canopy, he thought over his reasons for being here, and shook his head dejectedly.

Five days later: The druid watched with a malicious grin as the mage troupe crawled out of the edge of her domain, into the plains from which they had come, and disappeared. "Well, that was interesting." She looked around and her eyes fell on a thorny vine. "And quite repeatable." She took the vine and cast a spell upon it, and watched as it slowly took root, grew to surround the edge of the forest near the plains, and began to secrete a strange fluid from its thorns.