The Forest Labyrinth (Started/ Closed)

Messenger and I have restarted this SB, hoping for some better luck this time!

Your character is trapped. This place looks like a forest, grows like a forest. It is cupped in a valley at the feet of three mountains, nestled in the center of an enormous mountain range. The road runs right through it, so you decide it's probably ok to travel through. But once you're in, the path leads you in strange directions. And you realize that as you travel, the forest gets thorny and dark. It is a menacing, living thing, and the trees threaten you. You turn back, but the path has changed! It only leads you deeper into the labyrinth. You realize that the paths shift like living things and there are many intersections to get lost in. You just want to get out at this point, but the undergrowth at either side of the path is so thick and spiky that you daren't try to pass. You keep walking, and keep walking, and keep walking and hope you get out alive...

Put your character through the most difficult challenges a forest can dish out in this storybook! Here are the rules:

Spoiler

-Characters may meet/interact with others who are trapped, but expect to get separated at some point
-Keep it PG-13
-We're afraid that the characters have to be normal human beings. No magic, no psychic abilities. Sorry!
-Other than that, typical storybook rules apply.
-Expect any of the following, because the forest will consciously try to kill you: vines like whips, trees falling inexplicably, small forest fires that start and end suddenly, poison ivy, poison oak, roots that try to trip you at bad moments, marauding bandits, overly aggressive bears that chase you, hungry wolf packs, any number of rabid animals, lack of edible food or fresh water, lack of sunlight under the canopy, quicksand, holes to fall down, and lots of other nasty little things.

We will occasionally intervene by taking the consciousness of the forest, but we won't kill you off without giving you a chance to save yourself.

We need a distinct character description. Here's a suggested character template, but anything else you want to add is ok. Take your time, and take as much space to as you need to describe them! Put the description in the sidebar, don't post it.

Spoiler

-Name
-Gender
-Age (15 and up, please)
-Physical Description
-Personality
-History(optional)
-Special skills (optional; nothing magical!)
-Resources (what does you character have with them? Only one animal is allowed to accompany you):
-Other (optional)

Betwixt the boughs and eerily echoing about the forest pierced the shrill cry of a penny whistle. The sound bounced of the tree trunks and frighted the birds from the trees. The tune in question was The King of the Fairies, quite appropriate in such a foreboding wood.
The culprit at the whistle was a scragglty bard, dressed in a fine yet torn scarlet cape, and white silken shirt. He played quite merrily, either in defiance or ignorace of the sense of evil surrounding him.
"Now then. If I'm here," he said to himself as he paused to consult a small map, "Then... that can't be right."
He turned his horse and rode in the direction from whence he had come, only to find his path blocked by an ancient oak that he could be sure hadn't been there before.
"Oh f..... Fie."

Observational eyes swayed left to right, carefully scrutinising their surroundings as an eerie quiet dominated the forest's chilling atmosphere. Leathers scrunched as the feet of Pitelle trod with care across the hoary brush, but it had been long since she had used that name. A sharp black and grey shape circled above, like a satellite, as Corvusia followed the path that Bane had scouted, and brought no news of hazards- of course, in a place like this, there was always a chance that he may not have recognised one. A thick fog had descended a few minutes earlier (was it minutes, or hours?) over the ground, so she had little choice but to follow his caws, and hope that he had been as reliable as he had been for eight years; ever since his mother died.

The assassin fiddled with one of her 24 arrows, carved from teak and tipped with titanium, keeping it light and durable, while not sacrificing lethality for either. A snap from her right made Corvusia draw her bow, fast as a bird's dive, and load the arrow, keeping it taut and ready to fire. She rotated on the spot, checking all angles to ensure she had only imagined the sound. Bane swooped down, cawing to assure his mistress it was he, and perched on her shoulder. The bow was lowered and the arrow sheathed; there was something about the crow's presence that kept Corvusia calm and composed.

Her legs had started to tire, even though she had no idea of how long she had been walking- it was as if the forest's canopy rejected the presence of time. Setting herself down, she undid the cap on her flask and drank slightly, rationing herself in case this journey took longer than she expected. Pangs of hunger started to slowly creep into her mind, and Cornixa the Hooded considered searching for food once she had recovered.

Kel - With Night 

He pondered if he should start up a fire or not, Night had caught several rabbits and vole that now lay abandoned by the base of a skeletal willow. Night's lament eyes watched him intently, Flicking one white hair as he slowly stretched into a hunter's crouch and stalked off. 

"Hey, I'm going to start up a fire, that ok with you?" He gathered a few of the better sticks that seems to carpet this part of the forest, Night flicked one ear dismissively and tossed a rabbit over and began to tear into the vole. 

He shrugged, and took out the small hunting knife and began to skin the rabbit with quick moves. The fire took longer than he expected since the sticks were either too brittle or too damp from whatever had dampened them. It was a full ten minutes before he had a small flame going and skewered the rabbit on a stick and rotated over the flames. He knew the full danger in flames in an isolate and strange place, yet he wanted to attract whatever beasts or there, or people for that matter to know where he stands in terms of rank and survival in this desolate forest. 

"Is going to be a long night." He sighed wearily, and flipped the rabbit over. Night had moved to what he seems to think is an inconspicuous shuffle, yet tot the experienced eyes of Kel it was like he rolled over with a great ruckus. Smiling lightly, he added a few more sticks to the fire and scanned the perimeter with cautious eyes. Ready to defend or attack at the sign of any threat. 

Danielle Colter

Only three hours ago I had ran away from my overly protective father. I loved him but I was to tired of his protective nature. These woods were a lot creepier than I thought about earlier. I was tired, so I found a tree to cuddle up against for at least a few minutes. The tree felt like it had a heart beat. "What the hell?" I say. Then, it grumbled beneath me.

Jumping up, I start to walk. I smell a fire, so I walk the way it is coming from. A wolf began to howl and I freaked out a little. I hate to be alone and a scary environment.

When I see the fire I walked out into the opening. "Hello?" I ask. The wolf like dog stared intently at me. "Hello?" A voice said, I guess in response to me. "I'm... Danielle, do you possibly know the way out of here?" I asked. He shook his head and I sighed with devastation. I want to see light.

"My name is Kel. That's Night." He tells me a little awkward. I sit by a stump and look at the fire. The wolf by the name of, Night, slowly walked over to Kel and laid on his lap. I was a little nervous being around people I didn't really know, I wouldn't dare let that show.

"Do you talk much?" I ask. He looked at me over the fire and nodded. "Really now... Doesn't seem like it." I mumble to myself.

After about twenty minutes, I lay against one of the trees and fall asleep, finally,

Lance

Lance glanced up at the gray sky. It looked just like his future. Bleak. He nudged Faithful, his white mare, forward. She was the only thing that he had left to call a friend. Everyone else? Gone. Brother dead. Parents? Never knew them. They died in a great war when he was just a baby.

Lance was often told he looked like his father: same cool blue eyes and black hair, strong build, a brave fighter and a smart thinker. Ha! Smart thinker? The whole reason he was alone was because of his so called "smart thinking."

But he could start fresh, couldn't he? Begin a new life and still become someone respected. No. Not after being exiled. his last name had never existed before that battle, but now it was known throughout the land. Exiled. Yes, because of one mistake on his part that he had deemed wise at the time, his brother, and all of his beloved comrades in his cavalry battalion had been killed.

Exiled not only in terms distance of land, but in friendship as well, he left bitter and angry. And now he looked up to see something he didn't need. A forest. An ugly looking forest. His future just got worst. And it started raining.

Sarah David

I walk into the forest, watching out for danger. Not too far off, I hear music. I go toward the music and see a bard, singing his lungs out into the night. I look at his meager supply of food and decide to leave him alone. As I walk by the horse in the shadows, I smoothly rub its back. It gets startled, throwing off the bard.

Next I go towards the fire. Two people sit by it. I see their food and my stomach growls. I look at my food and then look at theirs. As I get closer, one almost sees me. I melt into the shadows once more. When it was safe, I walked to behind the two figures with a creepy smile. In a high pitched voice, I whisper, "Hello, my pretties!"

Danielle Colter

"Hello my pretties!" I heard. Immediately I sat up. There was a girl behind me. Was she possibly after what little food I had? "What do you want?" I ask a little annoyed. "Well i see you are miss grouchy pants. I'm Sarah." She said. Honestly I didn't care who she was. "Cool. I'm Danielle." I say and lay back against the tree. Her sly smile stayed the same.

"Don't think I don't see your little scheme, Sarah." I say. "What might that be, Dani girl?" She asked. I was quite for a moment. A noise sounded, it was a rumble from behind me. "Did you hear that?" I ask her. She nods. "I think it is coming from the tree." I say a little worried.

"Trees can't hurt you, so just ignore it." She replies. I laid back on the tree once more. It was oddly comfortable for a tree. "May I please have some of your food?" She asked. I gave her a weird face and look towards her pocket. "You have your own." I reply. She looks down a little disappointed and went on her way.

After she walked off, I laid there for many moments and just thought to myself. No one saw what I saw and that is what scared me. I know there is something off about this forest and I was definitely going to find out.

I put my ear against the trunk of the tree for a minute. There it was again, sounding like a heart beat. Out of no where, a tree limb was touching me. I jerked away. "Whatever you are. I'm not afraid." I mumble.

The noise came again, a loud grumble.

"Dang and blast it!" shrieked the becloaked bard and he brushed the horrible dirty pineneedles and soil from his knees. "And stupid animal!" The mule in all honesty was a fine one, many was the it had been mistook for horse.
The bedraggled bard remounted and carried on his way, tossing his small map in the wayside with a mutter of "useless object. "
After a few moments he came across a clearing. The air seemed less heavy and kinder, but I doubt the bard noticed. After all he had been unaware of the foreboding in the first place, and he had eyes for only on thing.
"Ah! Delicious mushrooms! " Feeling rather prowd of his foraging skills he dismounted and headed towards the fungi. Within minutes (45 to be exact) he had beaten the soggy kindling and was happily frying his mushrooms playing his hurdy gurdy to himself and the beautiful forest around him.

I pull up my horse, just outside the forest and pull out my map. Strange, it's nowhere near this big on the map. Shrugging it off as a mapmaker's stupidity I dismount. No point in getting my horse lost in here; she's already shying away. She turns and runs, heading back home. I've trained her well. I turn and walk towards the forest, hesitating on the edge. Something about it feels wrong. Maybe the mapmaker was right. Turning to see my horse disappear over the hills, convinces me to continue. I've been killing people twice my age for two years, a forest is no danger. Still, next time I'm coming a different way. I turn back and this time I enter the forest.

Inside the trees it's cooler, but not deathly cold. I speed up, not wanting to spend I night in here, where it definitely will be freezing. As I walk it gets darker as the trees press closer together. I hear a creak and leap backwards. A branch, massive and thorn covered, smashes into the ground where I had been standing. I bend to check the edge. It hasn't been cut, but it hasn't rotted either. But that's impossible. Well obviously not anymore. What sort of place is this?

I turn to see the path has disappeared. No way to go, but forward. I lean against one of the trees. "You don't want me to leave, do you? You want to kill me. Of course, right now you're just playing with me. But in the end you kill me." I smirk, "You may find that harder than you expected." I pull away from the tree and continue walking, all my senses on full alert, my hand on my sword blade. Let the games begin.

Paige


Paige was lost. Once again her father had trusted her to go fetch the water and the dumb girl had screwed up. The girl sighed and sat on the forest floor, the light suddenly dimming around her. Her brown hair now turned to a black in the dark light and her hazel eyes into a brown. The beautiful husky next to her barked fiercely towards the opening in the forest wall.

"You wanna go girl?" Paige asked the panting dog.

The dog barked once more in response to her already obvious question. The young girl followed the dog through the woods being careful not let her gorgeous purple dress get snagged on any twigs or roots.

The path thins and the forest trunks creak in the soft wind. Paige shutters as the wind becomes stronger and pushes her down a darker path. Misty barked in tune with the creaking trees and Paige screamed as she tripped and stumbled over the roots.

"Damn," She mumbled as she slammed chest first onto the hard packed dirt.

The beautiful girl sat up brushing her self off sighing. Her dress was now ruined and there was nothing she could do about it. Paige moaned and hoisted herself up into a tree for a better advantage point.

"Nothing, Mist." Paige called down to her dog.

Just as she started to climb down, the tree flung her onto the floor causing an trickle of blood down her elbow. Paige sighed and rubbed the sore skin and continued down the lonesome path.

Just a little further. Just a little bit further and the trees will break.

Niobe repeated her thoughts to the old woman wobbling determinedly behind her, her spidery hand fluttering over a sagging sack on Ben's back as if to steady herself. Niobe felt admiration bubbling in her throat as she briefly looked upon her grandmother, her thin mouth pressed in determination and her sharp eyes focused on a spot in front of her as she took one more step, ignoring the creaking arthritis finding home in her knees. Her hair, as always, was pulled at the roots in a tight white bun at the back of her head, but a few hairs had managed to escape and curled around her head. A smudge of dirt kissed her cheek and another spot of mud spiraled down her knee, hardening and turning into crust. Niobe turned her head and tugged Ben forward.

The sun had been sucked up by the twisting trees and fog was exhaled by the bushes, the dirty puddles, the scampering animals, the gnarled roots that intertwined at their feet. Fog was everywhere. It swallowed up her lungs, replacing it with ice cold moisture. Behind her, making her jump, her grandma started to cough, then double over, then fall to her knees. Niobe swiveled around and briskly halted Ben and ran to her side, holding her hand as the coughs racked her suddenly frail frame.

"Grandma?" Niobe called, her voice peaking into a startled question. The old woman took a heaving breath, and as quick as it was there, the coughing fit was gone. Her grandmother blinked and then looked up, seeming as off put as her granddaughter. With a quick flick of the wrist she wiped a blot of spit off of the corner of her mouth and leaned into Niobe as she stood.

"... We'll make camp here, for the night." Niobe said. Actually, a steady unpleasant feeling had wormed its way up her spine ever since they peered into the forest however long ago, and she had been very eager to get out of the canopy of dead leaves that hung over their heads ever since. She didn't like the thought of sleeping under the trees, which seemed to take pleasure in watching them. But she wasn't going to risk the health of her grandma just for some extra comfort.

Niobe carefully set up the tent they had and fed Ben as her grandmother worked on a fire. Occasionally she'd look over at her hunkering frame, bent over a pile of twigs, occasional sparks lighting the sky around her. Trying to keep herself busy, Niobe pulled off some extra sacks off of Ben's back, combed her fingers through her unruly hair, laid out their makeshift beds, cleared the dirt floor of wet leaves. But still, no fire. Finally, sighing and crossing her arms over her chest, her grandma looked back at her, asking with a twinge of frustration, "Could you get me some dry wood? Everything round here is too damp."

Niobe grinned and nodded her head, grateful to have something to do. "Be back soon," she promised, slicking off into the thicket of the woods. She extended her hands on either side of her, checking the bushes to see if they were wet. She twisted out and over stubborn thorns and ducked underneath sprawling branches, but it was as if it had been raining just an hour before. Finally, she found a dying sapling that jutted into the air, lacking the wetness that the rest of the forest had. She pulled out her butcher's knife and took a hack at it, stripping it of measly branches until it was suitable to bring back without much of a hassle. As she slowly found her way back, she called out, "I got some wood!"

She stopped short as if she was a marionette that had reached the end of her strings, the wood in her arms being strangled painfully to her chest. Her grandmother hovered just a few inches above the ground, her stubborn mouth opened slightly, as if she had just found a large bug clinging to her skirts that she didn't expect to be there. Her head was tipped back, her eyes looking somewhere between the sky and the canopy of trees. Her arms were slack at her sides, swaying in the odd breeze.

Blood. It soaked the front of her shirt, trickled down her wrists to drip to the ground, streamed out of the corner of her mouth, surged and squeezed in thick coils between her chest and the massive root that stuck out of the mud and impaled her small body. A small puddle was forming at her feet, and as Niobe stared upon her lifeless body her shoe fell off of her foot and flopped into the puddle, disturbing the crimson fluid.

She screamed. It wasn't as much of a scream as a gurgling, agonizing, suffering shriek of an animal that had just felt the last strike that would kill them. She crumpled to the ground, the wood tumbling out of her arms, as she sat on her heels and howled, staring at her grandmother's still, hovering frame. She stuffed her fist into her mouth, biting down to muffle her cries, tears getting caught in her hair. Her mouth filled with a metallic taste and the bones in her hand begged for her to stop, and as she pulled her hand out of her mouth, she saw just how much she had tore it up. A sob escaping her, she stood and tumbled towards Ben, who had been stomping his feet and throwing his head about in distress.

She felt she only had time to tie a few bags to his pack before she had swung onto his back, digging her heels into his sides. He lurched forward, calling out nervously, and as she felt the wind whip her hair around she stuffed her fist back into her mouth to stifle any further noise she might make, not wanting to startle Ben more into throwing her off of his back. She glanced back once as she heard noise behind her, and watched in horror as the root receded, the ground opening up to take her grandmother's body with them. She swiveled back and pressed her forehead against Ben's mane, stifling the scream that clawed at her throat. She wasn't sure, but she thought she heard the trees crack and shift, mimicking the sound of laughter.