Coralen grinned at the thought of it.

The group headed north, skirting Drassil’s outer wall. The area around Drassil was alive with activity, the hundred or so paces of land that had been already cleared doubled in a moon by close to a thousand willing hands. Trees were being cut down, branches lopped off and the timber dragged inside the walls of Drassil, the ground around the felled trees cleared of underbrush to create an open space around the entirety of the fortress. It was back-breaking work, as Coralen had learned first-hand.

I’d rather be out scouting than chopping up trees and doing battle with thorns as long as my fist.

They left the walls of the fortress behind them, following the broken remains of an ancient road, mostly reclaimed by the forest now, riding up a gentle incline that slowly steepened, trees felled as far as a high ridge. When they crested it, Coralen looked back.

The great tree of Drassil rose like an organic tower in the midst of the fortress, branches fanning out and framing everything. The sky was a pale glow far above, visible through leafless branches that scratched together in a strong wind. For a moment Coralen thought she saw a lone figure on the fortress walls staring back at her, then it was gone and she was kicking her mount over the crest, down the hill into a wall of trees, Enkara and Teca following.

They headed north the whole day, going slowly, stopping often to make notes on parchment. They were trying to map the outlying area of Drassil, concentrating on the swathes of land that spread between each of the six great tunnels. Coralen had put people in place in the tunnels, so that each had a small team manning the exit points along the way, horses changed every day so that if the approaching enemy was sighted word would reach Drassil on swift hooves. Their biggest threat came from the stretches of land between the tunnels, widening with every league that the tunnels bored beneath the forest. She only had so many scouts and couldn’t watch everywhere.

It took them six days to travel twenty leagues, zigzagging through the forest whilst they filled reams of parchment, using the remnants of the old road as a marker, although that was faint enough, a raised embankment here, a crumbled flagstone there. Twice they found waypoints on the tunnels fanning out from Drassil and spent those nights in the tunnel with the teams posted there. It was dark, musty and dank, but far safer than sleeping above ground in Forn. One night the ground trembled above them as something huge passed through the forest.