You and the other knights accompanying you tread through the forest with a spring in your step. It’s an important mission, and you were chosen for it! Your goal is to free some of Mordred’s prisoners from a remote base about twenty-three miles from Arthur’s castle.
There is little sound except your horses trotting and two of your companions playing “Guess What I’m Thinking of Using Yes or No Questions,” and the rest of you staying quiet. You’d think there might be some birds chirping, or something. But no, this is apparently the Forest of Silence (I’m just kidding. The Forest of Silence is twenty miles north of here).
“Are you thinking of something bigger than me?” one of your companions asks.
“No,” the other says.
“Are you thinking of something alive?”
“Yes.”
“Are you thinking of something bigger than my head?”
“About the size of your head,” your companion shrugs.
“Can it fly?”
“Yes.”
You close your eyes for a moment, trying to drown out their voices. You trust your horse will take you where you need to go, so you close your eyes to listen to the birds.
But wait.
There weren’t any birds.
You hear a piercing scream and open your eyes. A bird with an arrow in its neck drops from the trees. You look around. Your friends are gone.
A second arrow comes whizzing out of the trees. This one hits your horse in the knee, and you immediately hop off. You drop to the ground, but don’t bother hiding. If they can hit your horse, they can see you.
You wait for what seems like an hour but is actually two minutes. Nothing happens. Just as you stand up, an arrow whizzes by your ear and buries itself in a tree. You drop down again and wait another five or so minutes, before standing up again. This time, nothing happens.
You pick yourself up and walk towards the tree. Attatched to the arrow is a little note, which you unfold. Bright red writing is scrawled across it.
Go back.
You stare at the note for a few seconds before your horse’s pitiful grunts of pain wake you out of your trance. You aren’t sure how to treat a wounded horse, so you remove the arrow and take off your undershirt to wrap around its knee. You sit down, unsure of what to do. Your horse won’t be able to carry you. You’re only about eight miles from Arthur’s castle, so you rest for a moment, pick yourself up, and begin to walk home. You tear the arrow out of the tree to bring it and the paper with you.
It’s a long way home…
When do you get home, though, you find your companions already there. Each of their horses has an identical wound in its knee to yours. All of them look ashamed, embarrassed, scared…but one of them, you know is a traitor.
This quest is a Failure.
Votes: Success, Success, Success, Fail
