He was only following them, he told himsel, because hating off on his own at night in what was undoubtedly a haunted and certainly an unknown forest was, at best, suicidal. The two witches probably were safer. Marginally. The insufferable red-headed witch bitch, and the batshit crazy brunette witch, and the chattering little rag doll familiar.  Probably safer. But he was ditching them both as soon as he figured out where he was.<br/><br/>The forest gave way to a ancient cemetary, fallen into neglect and ruin by the passage of years. Dolly cackled and raved about beasts and sin and the like, springing and tumbling like a delighted child around gravestones worn by the passage of years into blank stumps towards a campfire burning near the heart of the cemetary. Red - he still hadn’t found out the arrogant bitch’s name - followed with a haughty air.<br/><br/>For his part, Rob checked the smallsword hanging on his hip, the one he’d bundled up to pass as a blind man’s stick, and sighed. “Who would’ve crazy enough to camp here?” he wondered aloud. “Besides us, I mean?”<br/><br/>Then he saw it, although he both heard and smelled it first. The stink of ancient rot and the horrible liquid squelching and dripping of a vast bulk made his stomach churn, and the sight of the thing made him gag. A mass of cartoon filth larger than a horse, moving on an assemblage of skeletal and decaying limbs, lashed out at a dark-armored figure with claws of ribs and finger bones at the end of whips of intestine and sinew.<br/><br/>“A... a charnelwight,” he gasped, nearly vomiting as he discovered breathing through his mouth didn’t make the carrion reek a easier to stomach. Nor did the memory of what he’d read of such horrors settle his nerves. Sometimes, he decided, it was possible to be<i>too</i>well educated.<br/><br/>What had the book said?  They were spirits of slaughter, given birth in mass graves and ancient battlefields, burning with the same heat as a compost heap. Swallowing, he regarded the knives he’d drawn unconsciously. What good would they be, against that thing?<br/><br/>And then he had an idea. A terrible idea, but it just might work.<br/><br/>“Hey!” he shouted, letting fly with a dagger that sank deep into viscous rotting meat. A dozen mismatched dead eyes peered at him.  “Right here!” he shouted, waving his arms and putting another dagger into an eye that burst like a blister. “Follow me!”<br/><br/>It lumbered towards him, and he fell back. “That’s it, come get some!”  This time, he threw a stick. “Think you’re hard?  Come on!” The answering below shook the graveyard, and he horror exploded towards him as he spun on his heels and sprinted towards the river.  “Drive it!” he shouted. “Make it follow me!”