Chapter 1: The Briarwood

Only the foolish or the desperate should venture into the upper reaches of the Briarwood valley. At least, that’s what the villagers of Thingley Bottom, two miles down river, will tell anyone willing to buy them a drink in the tavern. For centuries there have been lurid tales of strange happenings in the Briarwood; wild orgies; ritual virgin sacrifices; and numerous disappearances. Those tales have been embellished by generations of storytellers to the point where truth and fiction merge. Some of those who disappeared were people of importance. However, since the world continued onward without them, it seems that they weren’t as important as people previously believed.

Are the upper reaches of the Briarwood valley home to orgies and sacrifices, and the like? The short answer is ‘yes’. The upper valley contains the last remnants of an ancient forest that once stretched for dozens of miles in every direction. The valley is surrounded by steep rugged hills that effectively prevent access, other than by following the river upstream. There’s no road, and the river path is little more than a game trail. Few people make the difficult journey, which requires clambering around a waterfall and wading across a swamp.

The river flowing along the length of the valley is the cause of the valley’s weirdness. The source of the river comes from underground springs deep in the bowels of the earth. The springs rise through layers of different minerals that give the water unusual properties. Eventually those springs join and form a river that emerges through a small cave at the head of the valley. From there the river spreads its mineral bounty for nearly a mile along the valley before the minerals start to lose their effectiveness. The river’s properties in the upper Briarwood valley attract creatures that humans claim to be nothing but myth ... but secretly believe in their existence. In the storytellers’ tales, popular culprits for the strange happenings are elves, goblins and trolls. According to legend, those creatures are prone to violence, a trait that fits nicely with stories featuring orgies, kidnapping and sacrifices. None of the storytellers suggest that the Fae folk responsible for all the legends are peace loving dryads. Consequently, the stories told are fanciful with only a smattering of truth.

So let me help you filter the truth from the plentiful fiction. Any virile man who goes near Moonstone Rock at full moon may soon find his cock put to good use. But only if his cock is of the appropriate length and girth. Dryads may be peaceful, but they are very picky when it comes to sex. As for females, should a fertile woman wander near the ancient gnarled oak tree in misty weather, she will invariably discover something she wasn’t expecting. As for sacrifices, then no human ... virgin or otherwise ... has ever lost their life to an encounter with the forest folk. Far from it. Those who enter into this mysterious realm often discover that there are benefits in devoting their life to the spirits of the forest.

How do I know all this? I, and my predecessors, have ruled over our small Briarwood enclave for nearly four hundred years. For a thousand years before that the upper valley remained untouched other than by the occasional village peasant collecting firewood. Briarwood’s remoteness and dense undergrowth deterred would be invaders. Wherever a person wants to travel, there is always an easier route that avoids travelling through the Briarwood. So why do people go there at all? For some it is an act of desperation, seeking shelter from their enemies. For others it’s to prove their contempt for the rumours and wild tales, or to accomplish some holy quest to exorcise the valley of its imagined evil. And then there are those who secretly hope to join in those wild orgies, or participate in virgin sacrifices (but not as the victim, though).

In the 1640s, during the English Civil War, the surrounding region had the misfortune to be hotly contested between Royalists and Parliamentarians. Locals with any sense abandoned their homes and fled. Some of them found their way into the upper Briarwood valley. My forebears were among those fleeing for their lives. They stumbled across a majestic gnarled oak tree one misty morning. For the dozen women in their group it was a life changing event. Hungry and thirsty, they gathered nuts, and drank from the river, unaware of the strange properties of the water, and its influence on everything that grew nearby. My forebears were the first to be taken by the forest spirit. However, it was wartime and nobody was keeping records of who went where. Their disappearance went unnoticed other than by the men of their group, who soon discovered that they had problems of their own.

A few of the men continued to search the forest for the women. Most however fled back to their village only to be recruited as foot soldiers for one side or the other. The life expectancy of foot soldiers in that war was abysmal. The enemy’s cannon took great delight in decimating their ranks. With no medical care, even minor injuries could prove fatal. If any who witnessed the disappearance of the women survived the war, then none ever spoke of what had occurred in the forest.