The world seemed to tilt sideways as Morwen crested the hill and took in the devastation below.
Dead trees. Everywhere she looked, there were dead and dying trees, their branches bare and skeletal against the pale morning sky. The evergreens had shed their needles in brown carpets across the frozen ground, and the massive oak that dominated the clearing looked like something out of a nightmare, its limbs scattered across the earth like the broken bones of some ancient giant.
And there, standing among the wreckage of what had once been a living forest, were the demons.
No, Morwen corrected herself sharply, her hands tightening on her reins as her horse shifted nervously beneath her. Not demons. Eldritch. Sir Gavin had called them Eldritch, and she needed to remember that, needed to remember that these 'Eldritch' people were supposed to be their allies now, even as her heart pounded against her ribs and every instinct screamed at her to turn her horse around and flee back to camp.
