1. The Castle of Disappointment
Having your butt battered by the saddle after a week long journey wasn't the best feeling in the world. The sunny weather wasn't really comforting either, as it was making the horses awfully sweaty and smelly.
The young researcher couldn't say that she hated all of it, though. After all, she was waiting for such an expedition all of her career. Finding a sponsor that was wealthy and powerful enough to fund and organize it took over a year. A year filled with walking from noble to noble, attending boring dances and nearly begging for money and support.
Everything worked out in the end, but the fact that her sponsor basically expected an entertaining read from her future publication was pretty depressing. They weren't interested in biology and behaviour of wild and magical beasts or dying customs and traditions of simpletons living close to said beasts' dwellings - they wanted a fascinating story about a dangerous journey. Preferably in the form of a diary. With a lot of fiction in it.
But the fat sack of gold in her travel bag and all those strings that were pulled to make this expedition possible was enough to make her not think about the ignorance of said nobles.
She also got a handful of different permits allowing her to travel freely through the country and a pair of knights in shining, blue and silver armour as protection. She knew, though, that even warriors like these two won't be able to keep her completely safe. Bandit and monster attacks were still pretty frequent and there was no way that two guards and her pathetic sword skills would suffice.
Because of that, the young researcher was dressed like a man - dark green trousers, a white-ish shirt and really fine cavalry boots. With her not-that-girly face and messy hair that was shaped like a triangle, she could easily pass for a young, male student.
In the event of an assault by bandits, this attire would spare her some unpleasant and potentially traumatic experiences. Ones that she would rather die than go through.
Fortunately, there was only a few hours of road ahead of them, according to the map and the guards' knowledge at least. The researcher was thanking the Diamonds for that - the journey was starting to get unbearable. Horsehead, lone trees and a lot of fields with tiny villages in the distance were only things to look at. Sometimes a single cloud joined this company, trying to look like something interesting, a dragon, a knight, a pillow. There was even one that was dark and looked like a little castle. It was hanging low in the sky, far on the horizon.
Wait…
The young woman squinted a bit. It wasn't a cloud. It was their destination! She couldn't believe her eyes. They were already that close! The researcher was so joyful that she hurried her horse a little.
It turned out that the guards were a bit off with their map-reading. They arrived at their destination in something around half of an hour. A sign of the biggest village they have seen in days welcomed them.
There were at least fifteen houses with straw roofs, four barn-like buildings and over a dozen of smaller constructions. All of them were greyish, kind of dirty and were focused around a muddy square with a crudely built well.
On the other side of the village they were faced with a large mass of water. It was undeniable, based on its size, that they had stumbled across the sea.
Calm, dark blue and littered with buoys marking the placement of fishermen's nets. The travellers could smell the powerful aroma of slightly stale fish overpowering every other awful scent of a human settlement.
From the road leading into the village, there was a wide path towards the castle that was standing on a hill and throwing a shadow on the settlement underneath. A pretty high brick wall was encircling the castle's area. The only visible way through it was a big, wooden gate.
- Oi! Who are you? - a voice from the top of the wall asked when the travellers got near - You aren't from around here... What do you want? - the voice was a bit nervous. Probably because of the guards' presence.
- We want to speak with the baron - one of the guards lifted the visor of his helmet - Don't be concerned. We are peaceful.
The disembodied voice didn't answer, but some shouting could be heard from behind the walls. After a few minutes, the gate slowly opened showing the main building of the castle and a pretty big, fairly empty place.
The travellers entered the castle area. Instantly, they felt dozens of eyes on themselves. Warriors, both male and female, all wearing orange and yellow were sitting all over the place. It was quite unnerving to see so many people with rough faces, unfriendly eyes and weapons at the ready.
Fortunately, they didn't need to wait too long in the unpleasant atmosphere. Soon after entering the castle the big wooden door of the main building swung open and a big frame of the baron marched out and down the wooden stairs.
The young researcher was a bit startled. She didn't expect what she was seeing right now. It turned out that the baron was, in fact, the baroness. Woman of a monstrous size. A mountain of muscle with a magnificent mane of nearly white hair. She was wearing a breastplate and a long orange jacket, most likely padded with leather. A two handed sword on her hip, an awful scar going from her jawbone to her ear and an unfriendly glance made her look like someone you wouldn't want to anger.
- "Blue Court guardsmen" - the baroness' voice was quite unpleasant. It sounded a bit like a snarling, angry animal - "Fancy armour you have. Aren't you afraid it would get dirty? What do you want?"
One of the guards got off the horse and pulled something from his saddlebag and then turned towards the giant woman.
- "Baroness" - he bowed and handed her a letter in a sealed envelope.
She took it after a second and looked at the symbol imprinted on the wax seal with a clearly unhappy expression. She then crushed the seal, opened the letter and quickly read through it. And then she laughed. In the researcher's opinion, way too loudly.
- "A-are you going to accept?" - asked the knight, clearly confused.
- "I'm kinda obligated to" - the baroness said without even a slight trace of humour in her voice - "And the payment?"
- "In gold, exactly the amount that was mentioned in the letter" - the guard answered and handed her a pretty big bag. A lot bigger than the one the researcher had.
The knight bowed his head once again and got back on his horse. He nodded to his companion and they just turned their horses around and headed back, leaving a confused scientist with the baroness and her scary underlings.
Now, being in the centre of attention, the young woman got off her horse and stood in front of her host. She needed to look up - she was pretty short normally but compared to the massive baroness she looked like a little kid.
- "Um... Hello, baroness... eee... I'm honoured that I can meet you" - the researcher said trying to decide on how to address the giant noble.
- "Welcome in my castle, kiddo" - she smiled widely. It made her look a lot creepier than before - "I'm Jasper. Probably no one told you that. What's your name?"
- "P-peridot."
- "Great. Now take your crap and follow me. We need to find a place for you" - she said with bored, a little-irritated voice. Then she looked at the nearest warrior and barked an order - "Get her horse and put it in the stable!"
After that, she slowly turned around and started walking towards the wooden stairs leading to the castle's main building's doors. Peridot quickly collected her things and followed her host. A minute later they were inside.
The interior of the castle was pretty dark. Small windows were covered by heavy, dark orange coloured curtains. The candles and the fire blazing in the fireplace were only sources of light. All the furniture was made of dark wood and the walls were decorated with tapestries and various hunting trophies. A lot of them were made from dead monsters.
- "Those are from local forests?" - she asked looking at a head of a troll mounted on the wall. Someone stuck a pipe between his teeth.
- "Of course" - the baroness said pridefully - "We are hunting the monsters to make the region safe and clean! This one I have slain myself."
- "Yeah... um... Great job" - the researcher hoped that she will be able to find some creatures to research while they are alive. Only bright side of the dead monsters was an occasion to draw them without the risk of getting eaten.
Jasper, content with the compliment, showed the smaller woman stairs to the upper floor. There, she had led her to one of the rooms hidden behind wooden doors. It was pretty small and only a bit lighter than the big room downstairs. It was equipped with a quite simple, but comfortable looking bed and a desk with few old pieces of paper lying on it. The only problem was the smell. A smell of a damp rag that was wet for last ten years.
- "It's all yours" - Jasper gestured towards the room and lightly pushed the researcher inside - "Get comfortable. And remember about the dinner. You are eating with us."
With that, the monstrous baroness left. She just marched off towards the stairs and disappeared downstairs.
Left alone, Peridot dropped her stuff on the floor by the bed. With discontent, she found out that the room was deprived of a wardrobe. Good thing that she didn't pack a lot of clothes. It would quickly become messy there.
Speaking of messy... The young researcher looked through the bedding. She didn't find any bugs, which was good. She also sniffed every pillow and stated that the bed wasn't the source of the smell.
At least not the top of the bed.
She took a step back and kneeled down on the wooden floor. Leaning on the bed, she looked under it. There was a lot of dust but nothing that could emit such an odour.
The desk was also free of any smell-emitting things but she made a mental note to get rid of the old papers. Just in case.
- "It seems, that I would need to live with it" - she muttered to herself and fell on the bed. It was nice to finally rest after riding a horse for such a long time. To stretch the bones.
Someone's scream woke her up. Peridot immediately jumped up and nearly fell out of the bed. Still a bit drowsy, she stood up, slowly walked towards the door and got out of the room. The corridor was filled with the mouth-watering aroma of a roast.
- "Dinner! Come on you filthy horsefuckers! Come on before someone would eat everything!" - someone screamed once again. The scream was coming from downstairs and didn't sound like anyone the young researcher knew. Not like she knew a lot of people here.
Feeling her stomach rumble, Peridot went down the stairs and soon was back in the big, candlelit room with a big table in the centre. The table was set with silverware looking cutlery and loads of food. There were surprising amounts of meat, a lot of fish and some miserable vegetables which made the scientist pretty happy - she hadn't have eaten meat in ages.
She sat down on one of the free chairs and only now looked around the table. At the top of it sat the baroness, already biting into a huge piece of roasted meat. Beside her, five women sat at the table. All of them had dark skin and black, unbelievably curly hair. They were significantly shorter and smaller than Jasper but still were noticeably muscular. It was obvious that they all were from the south. People from the south were a pretty unusual sight and Peridot had no idea why there were five of them here so she started to closely analyse them.
The one sitting closest to her, on her left, had a pretty friendly face. Her red and orange coloured clothing uncovered her navel which was decorated with golden jewellery.
Next to her, a really confused woman was seated. Her outfit vaguely resembled the one her neighbour had. Her face, though, made the researcher think that she was at least a bit mentally challenged.
The one on the other side of the table, right in front of the young scientist, was a bit creepy. She had an eyepatch and really intelligent look. There was visible anger in her behaviour.
But her anger was nothing compared to what the next woman was expressing with her entire body. She was growling and violently biting a chicken's leg. Her arms' muscles were significantly bigger than those of the rest of southern women.
The last one of them acted rather quiet and looked focused. She was wearing small, yellow glasses. She seemed to be a leader of the bunch. Probably the baroness' right hand.
- "Don't stare like that" - Peridot nearly jumped when she heard a husky voice of the one-eyed woman - "Eat or your food will get cold" - her eye was clearly threatening the young researcher.
- "Come on, Eyeball" - the friendly-faced one spoke up - "Don't be rude to him. He's probably just curious and shy" - she then turned towards the scientist - "You are the guest that arrived earlier today, right? What are you doing in our little castle?" - she asked sweetly.
- "Right!" - the feral-looking one jerked her head towards Peridot, spitting out some of her food - "What do you want here?"
- "Army! Be civil" - Jasper snarled. The southern woman imminently calmed down.
- "I've come here to research monsters and local folklore" - the scientist finally answered and blushed a little when pretty much everybody started laughing.
- "We can bring you a drowner's carcass!" - Army guffawed - "Or some imp's head!"
- "Where are you from?" - the one with glasses addressed the guest.
- "I was born and raised in Yellow Capital, but I'm currently living in Blue Capital. Mainly because I was studying there" - Peridot answered. She probably said this line over a thousand times in her life.
- "A smartypants we have here" - Eyeball grinned.
- "Can you ask him what he studied, Doc?" - the confused one looked at the one with glasses with pleading eyes.
- "You can ask him yourself, Leggy" - Doc said in rather bored voice. The scientist started to wonder from where this name come from. The rest of the names at least had sense.
- "I'm too shy..." - Leggy said quietly.
- "I studied biology" - Peridot said making the shy woman blush.
After that, the conversation pretty much died. The young researcher was kinda relieved, though. She could finally eat something in peace. Unfortunately, the best bits were already eaten and most of the leftover food was lukewarm.
But Peridot was really hungry and ate as much as she could. With her stomach full, she sat more comfortably and watched the staff clean up after the dinner. It was horribly boring.
Because of that, her gaze quickly shifted towards the monster heads mounted on the wall. She didn't really have any plans for the evening so she decided to go upstairs for her sketchbook and draw some monster ugly faces.
Everybody left before she was back downstairs. It was a great situation - nobody to bother her, nobody to ask stupid things and nobody glaring at her for whatever reason. She could just sit down and peacefully draw a troll's noggin.
And all the drawing went well - in something that felt like a little more than two hours she managed to sketch five different heads. Unfortunately, she fell asleep in the middle of drawing the sixth one. With her face on the wooden table and her hands hanging under it. Her sketchbook was lying right and her the piece of charcoal that she was using for drawing was lost somewhere on the floor.
While the young scientist was sleeping, the baroness had come back. The giant woman took off her leather riding gloves and slammed them on the table when walking by the sleeping girl.
- "Don't sleep! Someone will rob you!" - Jasper laughed as the Peridot jumped up like a frightened animal.
The researcher looked at her host with a mixture of fear and anger. She wiped off a small stream of saliva from her mouth with a sleeve of her shirt. After that, her gaze fell on her sketchbook and she groaned with irritation. Someone turned its page and crudely drew a phallic shape.
Peridot snatched the page away and looked at the baroness who was sitting on her chair, with her legs on the table. Her boots were covered with dust and dried mud. She didn't look like someone who would make that sort of a joke. She would probably just bash her with the sketchbook for giggles.
All this thinking about the monstrous woman made her realise that she doesn't know anything about expeditions into the forest. She wouldn't be able to research a lot by sitting on her butt and drawing dead creatures after all.
- "Um... Sorry" - she stood up and approached Jasper - "When would I be able to go to the forest? I would like to start my research..."
- "You just arrived!" - the baroness said. She tried to smile but it turned out extremely fake - "Why won't you just stay in the castle for some time? You know... Rest..."
- "I would like to start my research as soon as possible" - Peridot repeated - "I waited for an opportunity like that for years! I can't just sit and wait when I'm so close to fulfilling my dream!"
The smile immediately disappeared from Jasper's face.
- "Listen here you little fucker" - she snarled - "I don't care about some smarty pants' dreams. I'm obligated to make sure that you are in one piece but I don't have enough manpower to give you guards that would keep your sorry ass safe in the woods. We are in the middle of monster purging and searching for a really important person" - she sent a hostile look towards the short researcher - "We don't need someone like you roaming around freely. Those dumb peasants are enough."
- "But..."
- "No" - baroness said with a serious tone - "I can throw you into the dungeon. You will be safe there. You still have a choice, though, so don't be stupid."
Peridot clenched her fists and turned around without a word. She snatched her sketchbook and marched up the stairs and into her room, feeling like a rebellious teenager.
The situation was kinda crappy. She needed to do something about it. All the time she spent on begging for expedition money would be lost if she didn't.
The first thing that has come to her mind was to run. To sneak out and try to go to the forest alone. She educated herself about survival in the woods enough to survive.
But there was one, big problem. And several smaller ones. Jasper and her soldiers in other words. They will stop her before she would be able to even get out of the main building. Then they will throw her into dark, dank dungeon and feed her with the worst leftovers from the dinner.
Then, suddenly, a small ray of hope appeared. From downstairs a joyful cry and clanging of glass could be heard. Castle dwellers started a party.
Peridot calmed down and slowly got out of the room, trying to not make any sound. She sat near the top of the stairs and started listening. They were drinking and laughing and singing. Soon they will be so drunk that they will fall under the table.
The young scientist smiled a bit and went back to her room. She took her travelling bag and started to pack her previously unpacked things and secure them from getting wet with a piece of leather. While doing that, she checked her belongings - some clothes, notebooks, sketchbooks, a supply of charcoal, rations for two days. And some other, less significant things. She also had a sword. Fairly short but very sharp and pretty well-made blade. Unfortunately, she forgot to take it to the castle. Hopefully, it was still securely attached to her horse's saddle. Recovering it will be a quite complicated task but a necessary one. Necessary for her survival in the woods.
Having everything packed, she took her bag and went back to her spot on the stairs after quietly closing the doors to her room on the way. She sat there for several minutes and as the party didn't seem to be ending anytime soon, she brought out her previously used sketchbook and started to closely examine her sketches. She analysed every feature of the monsters' heads, trying to figure out how they worked and for what were they used.
Surprisingly, it took her something around two hours and created a tonne of ideas and data to remember.
In the meantime, the voices from downstairs died down. The researcher packed her sketchbook, stood up and slowly went down the stairs. She almost fell all the way down when she heard a loud snore.
Everyone downstairs was asleep, with faces on the table or lying on the floor. A heavy stench of alcohol and sweaty bodies was in the air. The baroness was sleeping in her chair, taking as much space as she could. She was still holding a half-empty bottle in her hand.
Peridot took a deep breath and started moving towards the door. She took a step after step, as lightly as she could, constantly looking at faces of the sleeping warriors to make sure that they are actually asleep. She was getting really stressed out - her heart was pounding in her chest like a hammer and she just wanted to run away. Preferably away from the castle.
But, unfortunately, she couldn't. She needed to carefully manoeuvre through the room to avoid random bottles and other pieces of tableware. She needed to step over Army who was lying on the floor and hugging table leg. The small, dark skinned woman snarled in her sleep. The young researcher could smell her breath and it wasn't pleasant.
When she finally made it to the door, the anxiety didn't leave her. She was anxious about something else, though. Will the door open? Is the main gate unlocked? What about all those people that she saw when she arrived?
Why didn't she thought about all of it earlier?
It was too late to turn back, though. And what is the worst thing they could do to her? They can't hurt her. Jasper herself said so.
With that small bit of confidence, she pressed the door handle and winced when it creaked horribly.
Cursing whoever didn't take proper care of the handle and the hinges, she looked back at the table. The drunken company was as peaceful as before. Peridot breathed a sigh of relief and started to slowly open the door while still looking at the sleeping warriors.
The young researcher jumped outside right after opening the door enough to fit between them and the door frame. She closed the entrance and stood still for a while, waiting for someone to scream at her. When nothing like that happened, she turned around and quickly scanned her surroundings.
From the top of the wooden staircase, she could see pretty much the entire courtyard. A quite big place, a field of beaten ground, with only two buildings other than the castle. One of them was lightened up and a happy melody was coming from it. The other one must have been the stables. Guards were nowhere to be found.
That gave Peridot a lot of confidence. She nearly ran down the stairs and immediately headed towards the stables. The gate was, thankfully, unlocked so nothing stopped the scientist from getting in.
Inside of the building was pretty standard. It was divided into something around twenty boxes. Most of them were occupied by horses. Hay was lying everywhere.
Peridot quietly, trying to not wake up the horses, started to search for the one belonging to her. She found her mount pretty quickly. Then she crawled under the wooden gate of the box and carefully unfastened her sword from the saddle. Its hilt was pretty simple, same for the sheath. The grip was black and the pommel was shaped like a diamond. She hanged the sheath on her belt and quietly get out of the stables. She didn't even think about taking her horse to the forest. She wasn't the greatest rider and she would probably lose the animal pretty quickly.
Now, the main gate was the last thing standing in her way. It may turn out to be quite difficult to go through because - logically thinking - the main gate should be guarded and closed for the night. The young scientist already knew that the guards had apparently better things to do than freezing their asses while being on guard. But did they lock the gate? Or were they so arrogant that they left it open?
To Peridot's disbelief, they were.
Stupid and arrogant enough to leave their doors open and go drinking. Perhaps maybe they were sure that no one would attack them. They probably scared locals enough to make them completely obedient and killed off every bandit around.
But the young scientist didn't tidy up her mind with the idiocy of the baroness and her soldiers for too long. She was outside. She left the castle behind.
Peridot ran into the night. Into the dark forest.
And so it begins... Hope you liked the first chapter of "into the woods we go". It's gonna be only darker from here. I may or may not upgrade the rating of this story from T to M later on. Also, watch out - I won't put any specific content warnings in front of the chapters because I think it's pretty much like a spoiler.
I want to thank my beta readers who kinda left after reading first two chapters (or less): arielisfishy, Petaltoaflower, kurumizofangirl and novice novel writer. I also want to really thank the beta reader that decided to stick with me for another story - G. M. Keys !
~MS