Authored: January 13, 2024

It was off to the Brimstone Manor, you left Boar Hat Tavern, paid an extra platinum for your time there, paid for a couple of horses and left for your manor. They thanked you kindly and you left having not mentioned the little surprise in the room you were staying in plus the other platinum coin. It was a chilly windy, and foggy day when you set off, a dampness hangs in the air. You and the wolf girl are riding through a dank and rotted forest, traveling along this narrow road two tracks wide, enough for one cart or carriage. Dead trees littered the place, dead foliage and leaves blanketed the forest floor. There was a certain kind of "calmness" to this forest, but it was all the while unsettling also. It was not a very well-known place because it kills most people who enter. So, it was marked on maps as to keep folk away from it, but so far what you have seen it's nothing to sneeze at, but you have seen scarier things in the toilet. It was called Sauron's Lament, some folks called it Death's Garden and others yet, just a very wicked and most evil woods.

You have been riding for some time now, probably about an hour or so, and you have seen very little movement or anything but whisps in the mist and some shadows moving between the dead trees. It was mostly quiet, save for the horse trotting and the cricket chirping and the occasional murmur from Calix. At least there was wildlife sounds it means nothing was it the forest, at least from the time being. A crow caws in the distance, you watch as some of the branch's sway and move in the wind. Leaves are swept up in small gusts and blow in circles around the horse's legs along the way. You can hear horse hooves in the far distance, quiet at first. It gets louder and louder as you two get closer to the sound. It takes a good several minutes until the hooves are really beating the path up ahead, galloping towards. You don't see anything out there, not yet. The sound gets louder and then louder. All of a sudden, this hulking jet-black horse races passed the middle of you two, just shy of a head on collision. It was for only a moment you saw the rider. On the said beast, was someone wearing a large black overcoat and long dark riding gloves. On their side was a big silver sword, and a giant double sided battle axe mounted to their horses' saddles. On their head, if it were not for the fiery inferno of their eyes how could you have missed that distinctively bright yellowish orange and bulbous shape head. A pumpkin with a face carved into it like a Jack O Lantern for a split second stared into your soul as they owed passage.

The eyes were a blueish red, and the mouth burned brilliant red orange. It screamed fear and terror in its gazed which only phased through leaving you unaffected, so they kept on riding. Really just mashing the reins, whipping their horse beating the path behind you throwing up bits of incorporeal dirt falling off the ghost horse's hooves that disturbed the mist in their wake. It was once still and slow, now a swirling angry cyclone of water vapor. You two stopped a while and looked at each other exchanging looks and then continuing on after a while longer. Calix seemed unaffected as well, it was just really weird and unconventional and kinda creepy. Nothing came of it, and nothing followed after the speeding entity. So, you continued on down through the dark path and musty woods.