The next day I woke up in the inn room I’d stayed in the night before. Can’t say I remember getting there. But I was still fully clothed and alone in my room, so … there’s that.

Ouch my head. Hangover? Never had one before, but I’m pretty sure from movies that what I’ve got is probably a hangover.

After breakfast and a lot of tea – because coffee apparently isn’t a thing in this world – I felt OK again.

Maeve: “Simon, is there chocolate here?”

Simon: “Unfortunately, not that I’ve heard of.”

Maeve: “Ohhh! Say it ain’t so.”

But he didn’t. It seems that my two favorite foods are entirely unknown here.

Anyway, we wrapped up collecting things from rooms and stables and headed out to meet Midnight on the outskirts of town and then circled around the town towards Selkir City.

There was nothing like the traffic on an Earth highway. But every now and then we did pass a farmer, a carriage, a caravan of carts, or a patrol going one way or the other between Dunmar and Selkir City. Our party clearly freaked out a lot of people, what with them not being used to folks traveling with a squirrel on their shoulder let alone with a stalker. But aside from having to explain to patrols that Midnight really is a pet several times and that one guy who saw Midnight, panicked, and sprinted off in the opposite direction, it all went OK with passersby. I wonder what happened to that guy. We never saw him again the whole trip.

Simon and I talked and talked along the way. If I think about my old life honestly, excluding talking about the Three Moons game with my guildees, I’d probably talked with Simon more after a few days down the road towards Selkir than with anybody on Earth except maybe my parents. Well, maybe some of my old school friends could be in the running if we count social media. Maybe. Then they drifted off to their other friends, friends from work and friends who could still get out and do things. Anyway, suffice to say I’m kind of digging this whole riding a horse between towns with a friend thing.

Four days out of Dunmar, we crossed out of the Jovar Duchy and reached a wooden fort inside the royal duchy. Simon said forts like it serve several purposes. First, they’re supply points and checkpoints for patrols. Second, and maybe just as importantly, they house a troop on standby to back up other patrols or the nearest city as needed. In the game, they were mostly just a relatively safe point to idle when we needed to be AFK. That fort was as far west as Simon had been, so after that it was all new for both of us. I mean, all new aside from having previewed the terrain via the game’s representation of this road.

After that fort, farms and other signs of civilization were few and far between for most of the middle of the journey. The few farms along the road through that relative wilderness all had wooden palisade walls around their buildings, pens, and even some of their fields. At the end of the 6th day, we found an abandoned farm with a broken gate and spent the night as squatters in the least broken down of its remaining buildings.

A dragon flew high overhead on the 9th day. Felix spotted it first and promptly dove for my shoulder, because apparently in his hawk-mind decision tree I count as relative safety from a dragon. Flattering as that may be, when it comes to a dragon, I’m not sure I’d really be a safer shelter than flying around in the air above me. If it hadn’t been for Felix’s vision, I’d not have been sure what that dot was because it was too high for me to see myself. Dragons are seriously cool; but being in the same world with them, that’s where I like dragons to be: too far away for me to clearly see.

The road runs very roughly parallel to the river – except most of it is more straight than the river even with winding around hills – the whole way between Dunmar and Selkir. After it crosses over one of the tributaries just outside Dunmar, most of the road is a good half mile or more from the river. On the 10th day, the road went through swampland and got within a few hundred feet of the river. Most of the road there was built up, packed dirt mixed with rocks and gravel. But a few parts of the road appeared to have been stretches of summoned rock wall with tunnels dug into the rock to let water pass underneath. Seemed pretty ingenious to me. And those structures weren’t depicted in the game. I suppose it’s hard to include every feature from an entire world in a computer game.

We spotted a giant frog not too far from the road at one point and collectively agreed we had to try the frog legs. Frogs don’t have much way to deal with arrows, so the battle was easy. Dragging it out of the muddy ground to solid ground was the hard part. But after we’d sampled the roasted frog legs, we declared it worth the effort. At least for a rare occasion. Not exactly something I’d want to do for a living.

Late on the 11th day, hours after the passing out of the swampy terrain to higher ground, we saw another fort and then started to see frequent farms again. Then another hour later we found a road sign with directions indicated for Selkir City, Dunmar, and Rin. The one for Rin pointed down a side road where we could vaguely make out a settlement. And the Interface map showed a small village there. So we went in search of an inn.

What we found within the village’s gate was more of a bed and breakfast than an inn per se. But it was nice to get off the road. And after a fair amount of reassurance that she was a pet, the proprietors agreed to let Midnight sleep in their otherwise empty stable alongside our horses on the condition that we made sure she was not at all hungry.

The proprietors were a couple named Banach and Marid, whose three lean children swarmed about the dusty turf around the inn playing tag or otherwise running amok whenever we looked there. Through the evening, the couple told us myriad tales of their children’s social efforts to alternatively befriend or mess with other children who lived in the village. And we told them of our trip from Dunmar, especially seeing the dragon. According to our hosts, the guards in the nearest fort also claimed to see a dragon from time to time but none of the villagers had.

They only had one room, but it at least had two beds. Simon offered to sleep in the stable so it wouldn’t be awkward. But I insisted this made absolutely no sense whatsoever with our weeks of traveling, especially after we’d already slept in that abandoned farm. Aside from needing an application of Insect Ward, the beds were otherwise good enough. I’d probably have slept all through the night except I woke up midway from sensing that Midnight was getting antsy. Had to head out to calm her down. She’s barely used to hanging out with horses and not at all used to sleeping in a stable. Now that I think about it, it seems weird that Desi doesn’t seem freaked out by Midnight. I have no idea why not. With Lucy, it might be that she and Midnight are maybe linked through me or something. But that shouldn’t be the case for Desi. And don’t horses find big cats scary? Definitely weird.

Meanwhile back inside the B&B, George the squirrel had moved from the side of my bed to my pillow. And that won’t do for sleeping, so I had to move him back. He wasn’t pleased with being evicted from the pillow so it took several times of repeating the process before he relented and we got some more z’s. And then I woke up in the morning with George curled around my head. Stubborn little guy.

Over breakfast, Marid said that some of their neighbors had been hunting the day before and this morning at the well they spoke of losing their prey to and narrowly escaping from a pack of wolf-like monsters with black fur and glowing red eyes about half a day to the east. 

Maeve: “Simon, that sounds like Black Wolves. Want to hunt them?”

Simon: “Not familiar. Think we can handle them?”

Maeve: “It’ll take some effort, but yeah.”

In the game, Black Wolves are a level 3 monster that can sometimes be found alone and other times teams up with goblins. They’re usually not found this far south in the game. Usually closer to the borders of Novgora. But who knows whether that’s a change in this world or just a difference from the game. Well, Lars might know; but I don’t have a way to ask him.

We asked our hosts about bounty. They weren’t familiar with any bounty on the wolves but assured us the whole village would be grateful. So there’s that. We arranged to leave the horses in the stable and headed east. Midnight looked relieved just to get out of the stable.

After heading east till around noon while hunting for bait critters along the way, I used my Search spell.

{[Search]} black wolves

And sure enough, there were 4 hits on the map about half a mile away. Felix, Midnight and I stood watch while Simon set a series of traps around us. Although half the time “stood watch” here was a euphemism for “occasionally checked my map between bouts of me vigorously scritching Midnight.” It felt a bit like I was slacking really. But I don’t know setting traps. And standing watch is playing a part, right?

After several hours of this, we pulled out the bait we’d caught along with the last of the leftover deer. Simon set the rest of the bait while I vigorously whirled the leftover deer bits through the air to spread the scent before tossing them to Midnight so that she wouldn’t be too grumpy about not eating the rest of the bait.

For the final touch, after we got in our ambush spot behind the camouflage Simon had set up, I started occasionally mimicking one prey animal or another off and on. It took a good 15 minutes but I eventually saw black wolf marker movement in our direction on the map. Then I watched through Felix’s circling view and waited till they were almost in normal sight before letting out one more rabbit noise. 

Faint rustling sounds in the brush. They came through and we all saw them. Just as described, black, unkempt fur. Glowing red eyes. About 4 feet tall at the shoulder.

Simon tossed a rock to the side. The black wolves shifted direction towards where it hit.

*Thwoosh!* A bent tree was released and one of the Black Wolves bobbed up and down, hanging from one caught front paw with its hind feet touching the ground.

I told Simon to “take left” while I aimed for the right-most one. But moving targets are hard. He hit his in the chest. I missed. Mine and the other one that was neither trapped nor targeted lurched away from the sprung trap and they triggered a swinging spike trap. Unfortunately, that missed too. But at least it confused and distracted the monster wolves. I managed one more shot and Simon fired two while the wolves were regrouping. All of those three hit, which left Simon’s target critically injured and mine lightly so. 

We dropped our bows and readied for melee while the wolves charged in. Meanwhile, Midnight – who had been waiting for my signal – pounced out from her hiding spot at the rear wolf, pinned it, and began shredding with her claws and teeth.

The first wolf to reach us was my less injured one. I swung my shield to block it and braced for the impact, which almost knocked me over anyway. A moment later the other one rushed at Simon who dodged aside and sunk both his sword and dagger into its side and drove them in. Then my wolf bit my left leg under my shield.

Maeve: “Aaaghh!”

I tried to bash with my shield and then stab with my sword, and I kind of hit with the shield. But mostly I wobbled and barely managed not to fall over from the pain of monstrous wolf teeth locked on my lower leg.

As the wolf remained locked on my leg and I struggled to keep my feet, Simon pulled his blades out of his fallen wolf and proceeded to stab at mine. Somehow during all this I also noticed little stones and nuts flying down at the wolf from the trees above. George the squirrel was trying to help out too. Go George!

Though the wolf probably didn’t even notice the stones and nuts, it did feel the bite of Simon stabbing at it repeatedly. As it was letting go, probably to try to bite Simon instead, I managed to stab it and Simon struck again. Hard to say who got the last effective blow, but it finally fell. Just as Midnight was bounding over to check on me.

Then I healed myself up while Simon picked his bow back up and took care of the trapped one.

> Level earned.

> Pet George earned level.

Maeve: “Wow! Good job, George.”

All in all, it went fairly well. Sure, one of them bit my leg. That hurt a lot. But nobody else got wounded.