I returned to Carver's Outpost.. to the Weald and to Asmodeus. This time, however, I did not go alone. The black cat Astarté has chosen to forsake her Master and tag along at my heels. Too, Taltos hides inside me.

The Briar King's lair is well hidden and even if stumbled upon, I think anyone in their right mind would turn back. The curse of the Briar Rose enables me and me alone to walk amongst the ever-shifting fields of briars, their black barbed trunks and branches moving restlessly now and again without rhyme or reason.

Within this unwelcoming nest, hidden away from the eyes of men, lies the horde of blighted trees who obey me.. or rather, obey the Briar Rose. Their count reaches the thousands with more growing every day within Asmodeus' cavern. He has plans, my Master does.

The blights are a horror to look upon. Squat, gnarled little trees with claws for hands and sunken depressions where eyes and a mouth should be. They have neither. Their only organ, the blight spore serves reproductive purposes. It is located in the head area as the rest of the creature is solid wood.

This blood-red pomme sits inside a hollow rather like a human brain, moored to the insides with sticky, resinous sinew. It is sectioned off in quadrants and contains the seeds to which the thing sprung from in the first place. It is edible and sweet.

When I come into the Briar King's lair, the blights tend to follow me and when I arrived from my trip to Eunomia, it was no different. They came lurching in my wake as I knelt at the feet of my Master. And he wasn't at all pleased to see me.

[0 petals fell]