The beginning of the quest wasn't far from the west gate, but since they had left from another gate and taken some distance to lose the players following them, they took a while to make it back to their quest.
Once they made it there, they were already inside the forest they needed to inspect. Since they skipped the part where they could have talked to the locals to get clues, they had to search blindly.
The only good news was that with Genie amongst them, the party had access to an excellent tracker. Genie went to work as soon as they arrived, sniffing the air and the ground.
She soon found tracks for the smaller monsters that had left the forest, and from there, they backtracked further into it. They followed the tracks further and further into the forest until the canopy was thick enough to block out almost all the daylight.
