The Ancient Forest...

Everybody else is doing it so... This is my setting description. Hope you like it.


The group of excitement-seekers saw a small stream snake along. Just beyond it, a vast, dark, overgrown forest, full of undergrowth and mist, loomed. The road cut straight into it, seeming to fade away a few yards in. The trees on either side of the trail-entrance looked not like a gateway, as some would expect, but more like two silent watchers, waiting for the adventurers to walk between them so they could sound the alarm. When they walked in, all sound was cut off; even the flowing of the stream just beyond the border. There were no birds singing, no insects buzzing, no animals braying, barking, or calling, and no sound of their own footfalls on the fallen leaves of autumns past. The air was so close that it was hard to move; the trees so close it was impossible to see more than a few yards ahead. Anything could creep up on them without them hearing or seeing. There was no use speaking, because it was strangely muffled, and even if someone heard, what could be said in this evil place? The air they breathed in smelled like any other oak-wood in its waning: the damp of the soil, the bark on the trees, the decaying leaves on the ground. But the taste of the air was different, it was a bad flavor, which can’t be described, and could only be understood if you could get to that woodland, not that you would want to.