⚔️Serberia

Finally shaking off the annoying branches from his legs, Veserod shook his head – his new boots, bought just today, were scratched by the thorny branches almost to the point of being torn through. At home, he would have to carefully treat them with special products so they wouldn't fall apart. In all that had happened, the hunter could only blame himself. Accustomed to his quiet, solitary walks in nature, filled with harmony and tranquility, he had taken it for granted that they could all enter the forest as if it were their own home, laughing and scaring away the local wildlife, cutting through the vegetation with iron, spreading the sound of heavy footsteps for miles around, and nothing would happen to them for it. Veserod could only thank the forest for the great patience it had shown towards the defenseless townspeople, who, according to Gungnir, had first noticed all this strangeness. Perhaps a lone woman or child, who had ventured out behind a fallen tree, did not deserve to die in his eyes, and he merely scared them away, preventing them from venturing deeper into the forest. His group could not expect such leniency. The youngest and most playful suffered the most – amidst the cacophony of clangs, creaks, and screams, mostly made by them and their companions, in contrast to which their animated opponent advanced in complete silence, at certain moments he could discern distinct shades of wooden creaking, forming a terrifying chthonic mockery of the blood spilled by the trespassers. Somewhere there, between the distant tree trunks, it was not so much observed with the eyes, heard with the ears, or smelled with the nose, as it was felt with the skin on the back of the neck – an unknown entity that was difficult to comprehend in its usual sense. The mind itself filled in the details of what it should have identified there, and being deceived, constantly replaced this information. At different moments of the battle, from different distances and different angles, Veserod noticed there either a shapeless dark figure in the fog, or a hunched, dwarfish forest spirit, covered in leaves, clinging to the trunk of an ancient pine tree with all four limbs and its head upside down, or simply an incomprehensible glow, piercing through the shells of the eyes directly into the head and sending a tremor through the whole body. Every new glance, every new movement of the gnarled, warty branch of their opponent in his field of vision – and the standard senses deceived him again. Veserod never understood what ended their deadly battle with nature. Did the spirit break free from the evil influence? Did it get its fill of blood? Perhaps it decided that we deserved the right to be here? Or maybe there was no battle at all, except for the one that took place inside their own heads? The torn clothing could very well have been the result of their torments, their struggle with the embodiments of the ominous illusion. One way or another, seeing with surprise and relief that all his comrades had come to their senses, Veserod does what he should have done from the very beginning – he asks all the spirits of this place to forgive them for the intrusion, and leaves a unit of provisions as an offering. "The guys seem to have worked well together. The old man will be pleased when he finds out," he concluded, finding at least something positive in this situation. Without ceasing to scan the difficult-to-perceive terrain with his eyes, he gave the group a minute or two to rest and recover, after which he reminded them that they were still in a dangerous area, and they must not lose their vigilance. After (or during) the remaining role-playing scenes, we clear the location. If we need to move from cell to cell, we do; if not, then yes, we cautiously search the area and the place where the spirit was located, and if anything else interesting is found. I may not be available in the first half of the day, so if there is nothing RP-critical there, requiring advice or strictly tied to leadership, then we just do what needs to be done.