When the sun finally rises, you’ve left the Afflicted City and its monstrous shadows far behind you. The road ahead is strewn with debris from those who weren’t so lucky. Clothes, weapons, and other long-abandoned possessions litter the roadside. To begin with, you hope that they might just have been discarded for a faster getaway – but then you come across the upturned carriages, windows smashed and paintwork smeared with bloody stains. They’re piled up in the centre of the road, a last, failed defence against the marauding shadows. It seems that you’re the last person to leave the City alive in a long while. You check your pack – yes, the lemons you ‘borrowed’ have moulded into dust overnight. At least the water you gathered is still potable.

Suddenly, a shriek cuts through the silence.

“Somebody! Help!”

The scream came from the woods lining the roadside. You run towards the sound, reaching for your sword. As you cross the threshold of the forest, the air turns cold. You look around frantically for the person who screamed.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” You call and get no response. The dense foliage around you seems to dampen all sound – you can’t even hear the birds. Was that really a human scream? Perhaps you’re only hearing things.

You turn back to the road, intent on continuing on your journey – but the road is gone, replaced by a wall of trees, crisscrossed with thick, ancient vines. You hear a rustle behind you and whirl about again. Behind you, where moments ago was nothing but thick forest, is a dainty, well-trodden path leading deeper into the trees.

More magic. With a sigh, you hoist your pack up on your shoulders and follow the trail.

Hours pass. The forest has new tricks at every turn – innocuous looking vines that reach up to grab your ankles as you step across them, tree trunks that disappear when you try to sit on them for a rest – every little thing hides some new, more malicious secret. The cosy looking path quickly devolved into rough terrain, and then back into the plain dirt of the forest floor. Now, the way forward is covered with thick, waist-high briars. The way you came has been replaced with trees squeezed together so tightly, you doubt you could even slide a piece of paper past them. You’re well and truly trapped.

You consider your options. You could simply slice your way through with your trusty axe, but you still don’t know where you’re supposed to be going. There are no helpful signposts reading ‘Necromancers this way!’ - and even if there were, it would probably just be another of the forest’s tricks.

Your first step is to get your bearings. The thick canopy above makes it impossible to see the position of the sun, so you’ll have to get up above the trees to get a sense of direction. Ensuring that your backpack is secure, you head to a particularly sturdy looking tree and clamber up… and up…

This tree looked a lot shorter from the ground – but you’re certainly not going to look down and check! Gritting your teeth, you climb higher. The branches are thinning out now. It can’t be that far to the top.

At last, you poke your head out above the leaves and take a breath of cool, night air. You must have spent even longer in the forest than you imagined. Below you, the canopy spreads out as far as the eye can see in all directions, like a great, green blanket. You can’t even see the road you came from, or the spires of the Afflicted City. It’s like this place is a world of its own.

Just as you’re about to give up and climb back down, you realise that you can still see the stars, and grin. They’re exactly where you expected them to be – whatever strange magic controls this forest doesn’t extend all the way to the sky. All those hours spent studying Astrology are about to pay off!

You think the road you were on went east and then north, curving around the forest. You spend a moment triangulating – there’s Arachi, Iridan, Vale – but then you feel a strange prickle on the back of your neck, as though something is vying for your attention. Half-suspecting another of the forest’s tricks, you manoeuvre yourself around – and there, lighting up the sky in front of you, is Qimican, the sign of the summoner. It’s brighter than you’ve ever seen it before, and suddenly, you know that it marks the path you must take.

You swiftly clamber back down to the forest floor. It’s pitch black, and you can almost hear the plants shifting around you, plotting their next move. With a renewed sense of purpose, you level your sword and begin to hack through the briars around you, pushing onwards relentlessly, even as their thorns snatch at your skin and wind their way around your arms and ankles. Chop, chop, chop!

It seems as though the forest has got the message. After only an hour or so, you can see moonlight poking through the trees, then, the bright lights of the stars. You’re on track! You keep chopping, and soon you find yourself at the edge of the forest. Wiping the sweat from your brow you stumble out of the treeline and collapse on the ground for a well-earned break.

Before you is a vast, foreboding valley, illuminated by the light of the moon overhead. It’s surrounded on all sides by tall, dark mountains that seem to bathe the whole valley in shadow. You can’t make out any details, but it looks to be full of stone structures. Houses, maybe? Odd, green lights flicker through the windows. You creep forward to get a closer look, and that’s when you see it.

At the end of the Valley, silhouetted in the moonlight, is a palatial ruined structure jutting out of the rock. More green lights are gathered around the base, as though leading you forward. That must be your next stop – the home of the Necromancers.