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I was far enough away that her keening didn’t harm me.”
    Wrothgaar sat back against his rock, contemplating the story. They both sat still for several more minutes before the Prince spoke up again.
    “Come!” Eamon said, hopping up. “I will show you her lair.”
    “I already told you I do not like snakes. So, it would stand to reason I wouldn’t like banshees, either, don’t you think?”
    “Come on,” Eamon urged him. “It’s dusk. She’s probably hunting. She won’t even be there. If she is, we’ll kill her.”
    Wrothgaar stood, stumbling a bit. “Fine,” he said. “But I don’t think even my axe will stand a chance against her.”
     
    The darkness was almost impenetrable as Eamon and Wrothgaar trudged through the forest. The underbrush became sparse, and the mist became thicker, obscuring what little visibility the two had. There were no crickets chirping, no night owls hooting, or no small rodents scurrying through dropped twigs or leaves.
    It was dead calm.
    As they approached the clearing where Eamon was leading them, the calm grew into an eerie silence. A silence that was befitting of the scene before them.
    The trees became twisted and broken, as if an evil presence had bent and tied them together in ghostly knots. There was no doubt in the Northman’s mind that Eamon’s story was correct. Something terrible did indeed inhabit this forest.
    Eamon stopped and crouched, cocking his head to listen. He heard nothing.
    “Odd,” the Prince said. “Not even the insects are making any noise.”
    “I wouldn’t either,” Wrothgaar replied, gripping his axe tightly with both hands.
    “Usually the cicadas will still make their mating calls, but there is no sound at all.”
    Wrothgaar glared into the darkness, trying to make out something that lay several feet away. He crouch walked towards it, stopped a pace from it, and studied it intently.
    “What is it?” Eamon asked, crawling over to Wrothgaar’s side.
    “I think it’s a helmet.”
    Eamon took a few steps closer to the object and knelt in for a closer look. “It is,” he said. “A very strange one. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
    It was indeed different from anything either of the two men had ever seen. It was made of thin, black iron, with a mask shaped like a sinister human face, and spikes circling the crown. The eye holes were narrow, and the mouth was an open hole about the size of a fist. Just under the spikes was a black cloth that had been wrapped around the whole helmet, embroidered with symbols similar to the ones on the tobacco pouch Wrothgaar had found in the ruined village.
    “The Jindala,” Wrothgaar said, recognizing the markings. “So, one of them was killed here somehow.”
    “Likely it was the banshee,” Eamon suggested. Wrothgaar turned to ask how the Prince knew, but he had wandered a ways away. The Northman looked in his direction and asked in a harsh whisper, “Are you sure?”
    “Yes. Come here.”
    Wrothgaar followed the sound of Eamon’s voice, and found him face to face with a frightening construction of twisted trees and roots. “The banshee’s lair,” Eamon said.
    Hundreds of mid-sized to large saplings were bent over into the shape of a dome in the center of the clearing. They were bone white, drained of all life, and ghostly in appearance against the black backdrop of the forest. Around the macabre dome lay the bodies of six or so men, all wearing the same helmets the two saw before, with bright red tunics and black plate armor.
    Wrothgaar bent over to look at one of the bodies. He gasped at the sight of the corpse’s face. It, too, was twisted and lifeless like the trees. The skin was blistered and torn, the eyes were wide open, and the mouth was frozen open as if in mid scream.
    “What happened to these men?” The Northmen asked.
    Eamon sighed. “It’s what a banshee does. Her keening is so unearthly and disturbing that it steals a man’s soul, leaving his body to wither and