We started by continuing our fight with the wood-crows. During the fight the magic using crows were able to cast spells that caused some rapid mutation. It was pretty scary to watch as almost everyone in the party began to rapidly change. After a few more of the more melee oriented birds fell the spell caster reached out to me. Turns out they were only looking for a toll to move forward. I felt really bad, and told the others to stop fighting. We eventually talked each other down and shared a bit of information. They are called "Ravenforms" and they can actually regrow fallen members. I think that's pretty damn interesting, but also fucking terrifying. The good news for us, is the mutation magic only lasts as long as the spell caster is focused on it, so the party returned to their prior form. We also agreed with on of the Ravenform to travel with us as a guide and hopefully reduce any future tolls.
We continued our travel forward learning more from the ravenform. On the fifth day we had to take flight due to some trees deciding they had a taste for flesh instead of cocoa. This actually worked out for us as we decided to speed up our travel a bit by spending a couple hours flying and the rest of the day walking. If I had to guess, I imagine it gave us half a days increase in speed. Anything to get to this "Gold City" faster works for me.
On the morning of the sixth day we awoke surrounded by trees that demanded a rather large payment of cocoa. We decided it was in our best interest to pay them and continue forward. We again traveled by air and land and on the evening of our sixth day we made it outside the golden city. I don't know what to expect, I am both very nervous and very excited to be here. I hope we find who and what we are looking for.