It'd taken them a little while, but Yvonne had managed to get them to the sealed door into the Forest. It loomed large before them, big enough to admit a pony like Celestia. Or, well, herself. She'd had second thoughts, reservations about the soundness of her arrangements, but as she stood before the door she realized that this was the way forward, whether she wanted it to be or not. Her arrangements would have to suffice for now, the course was set.

Based on everything she'd read and heard, Byrgenwerth was significantly past its prime and likely little more than ruins now. That was why when she heard a voice, faintly at first but louder as they drew nearer to the door, she was surprised. The Healing Church had clearly wanted to keep the place under wraps, but to supply actual guards? It seemed like a pointless frivolity to her.

Though she had to wonder how frivolous after she began to make out some of what it said. In hushed whispers and manic garble it spoke gibberish, insane and unintelligible, and despite herself she was unnerved by its seemingly ceaseless barrage of… whatever it was saying.

She looked back at Yvonne, who had a similar expression of unease on her face. Regardless, she was unwilling to let the madpony beyond waste her time, so she spoke the password.

"Fear the Old Blood."

The voice stopped as the runed door swung open, revealing the mummified corpse of a pony just beyond the threshold. Luminescent fungus grew from its head.

Astral recoiled sharply, and so did Yvonne. "What in –!?" she said, cutting herself off as she preemptively brought a leg up to her nose to block out any smell, though none manifested. It took her a moment, but she recovered and slowly proceeded through the door, carefully scanning the room for the source of the voice.

She found nothing, no one, no where. The room was cylindrical and completely empty, save for the corpse. Yvonne did the same, carefully watching in the dark areas. A single candle dimly lit the space immediately in front of the body, and provided the only light in the otherwise darkened room aside throm the fungus.

"If this corpse was the only thing in here," Astral said, sharing another uneasy look with Yvonne, "then who was just talking?" the smaller mare finished for her. Astral nodded, turning back to the corpse. It was dry and absolutely, positively dead. As if to emphasize that fact, luminescent mushrooms grew from where the brain would normally be.

"I wonder what they taste like," she found herself contemplating.

"Gah, gross! Why would I want to know that?" She mentally gagged, surprised at her own thought, and quickly removed herself from their vicinity; decidedly against the idea of trying glowing brain fungi. Though, as she walked away, she couldn't help but look back at them. She couldn't tell why, but something about those fungi seemed… wrong. She turned back around and kept going, and she didn't look back again.

Yvonne was waiting at the stairs. "Nothing?" she said, starting down the stairs as Astral came up to her.

"No, but I don't like those fungi," Astral replied as she neared, "they're… weird."

Yvonne gave her a slightly exasperated look, but nodded. "Just the mushrooms? Not, you know, the whole disembodied voice and a corpse thing too?"

"Yeah, those too I guess," she said, chuckling awkwardly as she followed behind Yvonne. "But who knows? There could be a rational explanation. Magic, for instance, or something else. Those fungi are just weird. That's all."

Yvonne hummed as they met the landing, once again in another unlit cylindrical room. A single doorway led out of the building, and as soon as they'd crossed it's threshold they found themselves practically swimming in darkness. Trees loomed over them, and only a few paces ahead the trees fell away into a great cliff. From where they were they could see the canopy of the forbidden forest stretching out in all directions away from Yharnam, as far as the mountains many leagues away. Yharnam's outline cast a great shadow over the forest, many of the trees within sight from the cliff being deprived of the moonlight ones further from them were enjoying.

Try as she might, Astral couldn't make out anything below the canopy, though she could see that a path continued to her left, then back around to her right, down the cliff face and along the Cathedral Ward's foundation. She mentally shrugged. "Let's get on, then. No use standing around here." She stepped into the path and began to follow it, Yvonne stepping in behind her. It wound down the cliff face in a nearly straight line, eventually branching into two separate paths: one that led around the back of the Cathedral Ward, and one that led deeper into the forest. She took the latter.

-#-

They'd followed the path further into the forest, Astral eventually lighting her horn as they found themselves underneath the same thick canopy they'd seen from the cliff. Trees pressed in on all sides, creating a thick and seemingly impenetrable veil around them. Astral didn't like admitting it, but she found it intimidating.

They'd been travelling along a ravine that chopped through the forest, along the edge of which their path followed. At the moment they'd stopped on top of a small rock outcrop, looking out on the only way across the ravine, other than her wings. She'd been travelling by hoof rather than wing mostly for Yvonne's sake, the smaller pony having made her discomfort with being in flight quite clear.

Only a few dozen meters away was a bridge, dodgy and poorly constructed by all accounts. A few old articles of clothing hung off the wooden poles built into the cobble structure, but if their state of sun bleachedness and rot was any indication, they hadn't been touched for easily a year. The bridge was surrounded by a clear area on their side, but the path they followed disappeared back amongst the trees as soon as it left the bridge on the opposite side.

"We're going the right way?" She asked Yvonne, wanting the smaller mare to confirm their direction.

Yvonne nodded, narrowing her eyes at the structure. "Wellis didn't mention a bridge, but he said there was only one way through the forest, and that it led directly to Byrgenwerth." She turned and gave Astral a slightly worried, questioning look. "Besides, wouldn't the Vicar tell us if anything changed?"

Astral shrugged in response. "How should I know? Actually, how would she know? The Church likes to keep this place secret, so why maintain a path? Guarding the door with something already felt overkill for a place they want to forget, to me."

Yvonne just looked more worried now. "Yes, but she needs you, right? You're the Director," she said, sounding slightly scared. "She wouldn't just throw us to the dogs, would she?" she finished, nervously looking around at the trees.

Astral just shrugged, again. "I've got wings, Yvonne. She probably figured I'd be flying there anyways. Worst happens is that we fly back to Yharnam, it can't be that hard to see a giant stone city, can it?"

She stopped for a moment, visibly calming down. "I– I guess not?" She gave the surrounding area another glance. "As long as we don't run into anything big and hungry, at least." With that, she set off again ahead of Astral, going for the bridge with a tinge of urgency in her gait.

-#-

Yvonne still led the way as Astral followed. The path had long ago diverged from the ravine, and the further they went the more the forest had closed in around them, until it was less like a forest and more like a living wall.

Astral stepped in another viscous, muddy patch on the steadily degrading road, coating her already mud-covered fetlocks. She wasn't a fan of these conditions. "How much longer?" she asked the pony ahead of her, trying her best to not sound like a petulant foal, and probably failing miserably.

"Ages, maybe," Yvonne replied, keeping her eyes forward. "It's a big forest and, big surprise, not really visited much!" She grumbled something about proper roads, then fell silent.

"Right, well, rethinking your stance on wings yet?" Astral asked, half hopeful and plenty more than half tempted to just grab Yvonne and go, whether she liked it or not.

"Pshh, please, I'm not that desperate yet."

Astral sighed, eyeing up the mare before her. She had to wonder just how aerodynamic a flailing earth pony would be…

"Hold on, what's this?" Yvonne said as she stopped and peered through the darkness. Astral didn't stop until she was ahead of her, but did as soon as she made out what gave Yvonne pause

From where they were on the road she could see a small wall, and what must have amounted to a small village beyond that wall. The place was, if her eyesight wasn't failing her, in a terrible state of disrepair. The "wall" was little more than a long pile of rocks and the houses beyond were full of holes and damage, to the point where most of the buildings didn't even have a distinguishable entrance. Not a single thing but the wind moved, and not a single light was lit within the village. It was clear the place was long abandoned.

While the rest of the forest and path was covered by a dense canopy, no trees grew within the boundary of the village. Moonlight streamed down from above, illuminating the buildings with a soft, silvery light, bright enough that Astral could extinguish her horn. A single large hill, almost a cliff, rose up to the left of the village, a lone building at its peak and a snaking path it's only defining features. It was quite rugged.

"Well?" she whispered questioningly at Yvonne as the smaller pony had come up next to her. She took a brief moment while Yvonne thought to look around. The clearing wasn't massive, but it did make the treeline, dense as it was, feel far more intimidating and "forbidden" than it did when they were in the middle of it.

The red pony looked dumbfounded. "Nopony ever mentioned a village, only that there was one path…" she said, trailing off as she craned her neck to try and get a better look at the village and what was immediately within eyesight. "Maybe skirt the edge of the village, or get on top of that hill? If the path picks up anywhere, we'll find it either way."

Astral nodded, unable to think up anything much better herself, though she found the hill more of an easy option. She immediately set off to her left, to the hill, with Yvonne in tow. They kept to the middle of the clearing, as far from either the village of the treeline as they could and watched both for signs of movement. There was nothing, not even a single insect, to disturb the placidity of the abandoned village.

They eventually made their way to the path on the hill, and then, slowly, to its crest. The hilltop path wound around the base at first, disappearing beneath the canopy at the hill's backside before going up in nearly a straight line to the top. They found a house there that was just as decrepit as the rest of the village below, and for the most part simply a pile of moulding planks. However, from up above she could see the entire village and could tell that it was, indeed, in horrible disrepair. The ground within its boundaries was barren and dead, and it was clear it had been so for many years, if not decades.

From where she was, she could make out a fairly significant portion of the landscape around them. While the canopy remained thick, their height seemed to remain constant and low enough to give her decent visibility. Though a fair distance away from the village she could see a windmill and the trees disappearing suddenly. If she had to hazard a guess, the windmill was on the side of a cliff, and that was also why the trees disappeared so quickly. Behind, she could see the canopy and landscape gently sloping down towards her, and a few other cliffs and hills amongst the trees. Further back and higher up she could see the gargantuan silhouette of Yharnam, still blocking much of the first from the moon. Even further away, nearly at the feet of the mountains and far below their current elevation was a great lake. The moonlight scattered on its surface, a small amount of it reflecting towards them.

None of those things were what she was looking for, though. She searched the surrounding treeline for any sign of the path continuing, seeing as the village had little in the way of discernable roads. It took her a moment, but she did find a small path that led off in the direction of the windmill, and nothing more.

"That can't be right…" she looked again, and found nothing new. "Yvonne, you're checking for the path, right?"

She nodded. "Yeah, all I've seen is that path that goes to the windmill," she said, instead pointing to something much further off, and something Astral had neglected to really notice. "But do you see that? That's where we're going," she said, lowering her hoof as Astral looked herself.

"Byrgenwerth?" she asked, quinting as hard as she could. Try as she might, she couldn't make out any structures, though.

"That's right," said Yvonne. "Apparently the place was founded beside a huge lake, and I only see one huge lake, so that's probably where we're going."

She nodded in response, giving up looking at the lake. She couldn't make out any structures anyways. "So, think the windmill is where we have to go, assuming that's even the right path?" she asked, now squinting at the canopy, trying to figure out where the path led. Futile, but she tried regardless.

Yvonne shrugged. "I guess, nowhere else to go." She looked at Astral, giving her a friendly smile. "Whenever you're ready, my Lady."

Astral smiled back and nodded. When she'd set out with Yvonne she hadn't really trusted the smaller mare, but over time she'd grown to at least like her demeanor. When they were around other ponies she'd been cold and professional, but once they were alone she was much more warm, if a bit sarcastic.

She still didn't really trust her, and she wouldn't stick her neck out for her, but she wouldn't let anything unnecessary happen to her companion.

"Very well, let's see where this thing goes," she said, leading the way off the hill and down to the only other way out of the clearing, once again entering the consuming darkness that laid beneath the canopy.

Author's Note

Please refer to my second blog post, "Yes, new chapter soon" for Author's notes.