The Daydreamer Chronicles

Chapter One

The forest seemed to shift with every step she took.

A labyrinth of dense roots, trunks and branches coated in a thick green moss splayed before the eye. The atmosphere was damp and humid. Stealing the breath from the young woman whom navigated its dense, green expanse. The more she trod, the stickier she grew with sweat. The clothes she wore were damp and foul, but to consider them clothes was... too generous.

She wore rags, tattered and sullied pieces of cloth that hung off her and scraped along the earth. Out of sheer exhaustion the young woman slumped on a thick grainy root, catching her breath. She dared not look around, for it would only make her even more disoriented.

Five days–for five whole days she had trudged through the forest. For five days, she tried to find a way out of the endless canopy of suffocating heat. Sunlight trickled down through dense leaves meeting her face in a warm embrace. Sighing, she could do naught but think of the worst.

They told her.

Warned her–that the journey through the Forest of Dalgog would not be easy. Nor would she make it out alive if she did not keep her wits about her.

"It was perfect", she thought with a snort, staring at the likeness of every tree and branch and leaf.

With a forest such as this surrounding The Cells, anyone that escaped the prison would die. Whether of heat, hunger, or as prey to some monstrous creature... they would die, and the guards would do naught about it. Only laugh over pints of ale and place wagers, as they did every night.

To the guards and inmates, it would be considered a miracle if she even made it this far–but she knew otherwise. On her exile, she heard that many had wagered her escape of the forest. They had no doubt she would make it out alive and go far, far away. But now... even she was starting to doubt ever finding a way out of the thriving green hell.

A hell which called to her, beckoning her to lay down and give into death.

Being given a lone hunting knife on her exile of The Cells, she did not fear for her life, as much as any other inmate would. She knew she would make it, moreover, she had to make it through the forest.

The guards only mocked and sneered as she strode into the daylight, for the first time in three whole years. It had stung her eyes at first, but once they adjusted to the light of day, of the sun, she almost wept with joy. Before her was the region of Dalgog. She stood at the centre of it, stood on a lone mountain known for its title, 'The Cells of Dalgog'.

Inside, icy cells carved out of solid stone ran for miles, around bends and in corners. Deep, deep, deep into the mountain, so deep that the darkness held a taste, and a smell, whispering into the minds of those weak at heart, twisting their thoughts.

The cells were to hold hundreds, if not thousands of criminals, thieves and murderers. All the dishonoured the twelve kingdoms had to offer.

The lone mountain itself was completely surrounded by the 'Forest of Dalgog'. All angles bared the heat infused terrain far beyond the eye could see. Another method of capture and kill, if The Cells were not enough to detain the felon.

It was a well-planned and moulded prison, one in which escape was useless. You could not escape the cells, and if you managed, you could not survive the forest. One of the two reasons criminals feared The Cells.

The other reason... death.

The Cells of Dalgog, famous throughout all the land–feared throughout all the twelve kingdoms... feared because of one decree.