The Wrong Side of the River

If you take the covered bridge over the River Ren and follow the twisting road that bisects the stagnant waters of the Coracotta Swamp, you'll find sickly trees in ones and twos that grow more numerous the deeper you go, until their limbs form a spiderweb of latticework above you, strangling the weak, pallid sunlight until it vanishes completely, blocked by a nearly watertight ceiling of interwoven branches, beneath which the opaque waters hide black secrets and the land whose soil has been sapped to a lifeless gray, is poison to all but the most tenacious of plants. Fruits and vegetables grown here are larger and uglier than their brethren but nearly flavorless, except for the people-shaped mushrooms that spawn in a dark that hasn't seen the sun in hundreds of years. Flapping wings announce blind birds with serrated beaks that hunt by sound and when the road dries up and dies at a boulder-blocked tomb, you know you are trapped in the contested land of the warring families of the Blightwoods and the Skinners.