Thanks to the old, imperial road, we managed to travel hundreds of kilometers over the next few days. After the first day of travel, we tried to make stops at the small villages close to the road, seeking information and work. We spent the second night in a village-inn and learned something. Just because there is an inn, it does not mean that staying there would be a comfortable or smart idea. I almost left the inn, running screaming into the night, when I got a good look at the straw-filled bag that counted as a mattress. Not so much because it would be prickly and uncomfortable but because there were small, black crawlies living in the straw they wanted me to sleep on. And they even wanted to be paid for allowing me the privilege of sleeping on their bug-filled straw. Part of me wanted to ask them for payment, after I used my Ice-magic to chill the straw far enough down to kill even the hardiest of bugs - hell, the temperature I used would have killed me if I hadn’t actively used magic to protect myself. With that treatment done and our own bedrolls spread over the debugged straw, I was willing to sleep in Sigmir’s arms. Somehow, during the night, my subconscious must have decided that even that was not enough and when I woke up, I had curled up on Sigmir’s chest, putting her between me and the formerly bugged straw.

To top the experience off, the breakfast the innkeeper served made me wonder whether the bread served had been from this year or the last, and the less said about the rest of the food, the better. I thought about asking him for the recipe, it would have been an instant hit on the dieting market: once you tasted his cooking, you were cured of the need to eat - even just the thought of food would make you nauseous.

Needless to say, after that wonderful experience, the idea to stay in small inns along the way lost its luster.

But journeying on the old road was not just an experience in terms of exotic lodgings, studies in the behaviour of bedbugs and culinary extravagance. It was also a demonstration of just how vast the world was. How vast and how empty the corner we were in truly was. In a week of travel, we saw maybe ten villages, each with a hundred, maybe two-hundred people living there. And between each village, we had to travel hours, hours using the buff provided by the road and the endurance and strength of our first-divide strengthened bodies.

Out of curiosity, we had Rai run one leg of the journey and the difference was stark. The buff seemed to strengthen us according to our own capabilities, so Rai, with his greatly lower base-endurance, was not strengthened as much as Sigmir was. It let him keep up a lot better than without it, but still, we had to slow down almost by half. So, between each village was at least a day of travel for a weaker being, and that was considering day-length during spring or autumn. The seasonal change in day-length was not as pronounced as it was in reality but I had noticed that the days had, at first, become shorter and then, about two months ingame, had started to become longer. I figured that Mundus had its winter solstice sometime around that time but it was hard to figure without a calendar or careful observation. I had yet to see a calendar on Mundus and even for Sigmir and the others, there was no concept of weeks, just months, counted from full moon to full moon and seasons, which consisted of three full moons.

Lenore and I passed most of our time, trying to understand more about the magic contained in the Eternal Ice, even if our work was purely theoretical. The pain and the other problems involved with almost losing my hand had made me a little apprehensive when it came to the large chunk, so we stuck to the small slivers. It didn’t make a lot sense to me, why the temperature-effect was larger due to a larger chunk; everything I knew about physics told me that the temperature-transfer should be dependant on temperature-difference and contact-area. If you touched a hot stove, it didn’t matter if that stove was large or not, just the touching area and the oven’s temperature mattered. But with the Eternal Ice, I was able to hold the small slivers without real discomfort, it merely felt like holding a bit of ice in the real world, on the other hand, the big chunk had almost made me lose my hand, merely by being near it.

Anyway, after our days of travel on the road, we got to the first settlement that I was comfortable calling a city. It was located on the shores of a river that was currently frozen over and we were easily able to see it from the distance. The first hint for me that I should consider it a city was that it had a wall. A real wall, not just a fence with delusions of grandeur, it was a real wall, sheer, grey granite cliffs, seemingly directly grown from the ground, without any mason’s involvement.

That wall, plus the watchtowers and the keep that towered over the rest of the settlement made me a little apprehensive, I knew that I had not the best track record with towns. With that record in mind, if something similar to the events in Yaksha happened here, I had little doubt that some powerful magician would quickly appear and deprive me of my Eternal Ice.

In addition to that, I noticed that the gate-security seemed to be quite a bit better than in Yaksha, where the check was basically just a half-asleep guard, grunting in your general direction. Here, the gate was not just a single gate but a short tunnel with gates at each end and as we got closer, a short glimpse through Lenore’s sight showed that there was some sort of magic barrier or a magic field or something like that covering the opening. Sneaking in, like I did in Yaksha, would be rather risky and it was a risk I was not willing to take. To make up for that, I had fashioned myself a bandana-like leather-scarf that allowed me to cover my face under my hood without using magic. I was not sure if that would be enough to suppress the effects of the Outsider-trait or even if I would be allowed to enter the city while masked but I was willing to try. A mask could be explained away as protection from the cold, a personal fashion-choice or even some sort of tribal custom, not like using magical concealment and trying to sneak in like a spy or criminal.

As we approached the last stretch, the road traffic increased exponentially, as smaller roads led to the large, imperial road we were on. It was bad enough that we decided to dismount and dismiss our mounts, simply walking along without trying to overtake the few elk-driven carts that were used to bring some sort of goods into the city, even now in winter. Or, maybe right now in winter, I noticed that there was quite a bit of timber on the carts, maybe it would be stored as firewood or used in case someone was running out. I could imagine that storing enough firewood for a city was problematic, so storing it outside and bringing it in bit by bit could be a good solution.

Adra struck up a conversation with one of our fellow travellers and learned a bit about the city: it was called Kolyug and had been built by Wintertrolls, who made up the majority of inhabitants. I had yet to consciously see a Wintertroll, I had read on the internet that trolls in Road to Purgatory were unlike most fantasy-trolls; not simple-minded monsters but relatively ordinary beings, for Mundus that is. They were considered a sturdy folk, similar to dwarves in many ways, but without the dwarven predilection for either mountainous or subterranean dwellings and crafting. Their society was rather orderly, generally organised in profession-centered castes where the child took over the profession of his father and was apprenticed to him. Sadly, I didn’t remember a lot and what I remembered was written about another sub-race, living further south. Who knew if the information was even applicable.

Finally, we got to the city-gate and waited in line for entry, and I saw my first troll. The first thing I noticed was that the similarity to dwarves was quite obvious, their body-structure made the comparison obvious. The trolls manning - or was that ‘trolling’? - the gate were built like brick-walls, almost as wide as they were tall and from the looks of it, little of that girth was fat. Calling them stout would be fitting if they were smaller but they stood almost as tall as Sigmir, maybe half a head shorter. Massive was a good adjective to describe them or maybe solid.

The line moved on and on, until it was our turn. We let Adra do the talking and she introduced us as travelling Adventurers, getting a grunt in reply. Next, I felt the uncomfortable sensation of an Observe wash over me and for once, I suppressed the almost conditioned reflex to squash it, letting them see what I was. There was another grunt and Adra got directions to the Adventurers’ Guild where we could look for work and the guard hinted that inns around that area of town were very much geared towards adventurers, providing rough but cheap lodging. Adra thanked him and we entered the gate.

As we did, I felt a film wash over me and a glimpse through Lenore’s eyes showed me that the film was connected to another guard stationed at the inner gate. Looking at the magic, I thought I understood the purpose. It noted any living being walking through the gate, using a variety of means, allowing them an accurate count who was inside. Sigmir and I got stopped and told that we registered as two living being each and that we would have to explain that, or be denied entry. It took me a second to realise that they had detected Ylva and Lenore, so both of us asked our spirit-beasts to join us, Ylva getting quite a bit of attention compared to Lenore. It was apparently not every day that a wolf the size of a pony entered the city.

But spirit-beasts were common enough that there was no further problem, we were just told that we were jointly responsible and to not make trouble. After that small wrinkle, we were in the city itself, following Adra towards the Guild.