I got to the village of Willow Park around the ninth bell but I switched shells to Carnivac and walked the last mile in so that Cyclone wouldn’t cause any problems. When I got to the village, everything looked pretty normal. There were lights on in some of the houses, while others had gone to bed for the night. The village was large enough to have an inn with a small pub on the ground floor and I could hear yelling and laughing coming from it.

The others had gotten a room upstairs so I passed through the pub when I was hailed by one of the patrons. I turned to see another black-furred wolfkin calling out to me. Ah, crap. This could go wrong in a lot of ways. I gave a little nod and turned to keep going but was called to again.

“Come on over! It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of my countrymen! Come! Let’s drink!”

I really didn’t want to get too close to him, aside from the fact that I hadn’t given Carnivac the ability to eat or drink, I was terrified of trying to pass as a real wolfkin in front of an actual one. I had no clue about the culture to say nothing of the fact that I might come off as a bit Uncanny Valley for him. I imagine it’s a lot like practicing a foreign accent that you hear on TV and then visiting that country and trying to pass yourself off as a native... while wearing a human looking rubber suit...

I turned slowly around to look at him, I’m sure if I’d added the feature, Carnivac would have been sweating bullets. “Sorry... I... uh... I don’t, that is... I’ve got..”

The wolfkin stood up from his table and wobbled a bit, he was my height if not a little bigger and a lot rounder in the middle. His companions, a female gnome in wizard robes and a male human archer, uncomfortably looked between me and him.

“Aww.. you’re weirding the pup all out, Gree,” a high and girly voice said, which earned some snickering laughter from other patrons.

I looked down to see the upside down face of a lizard girl with bright red skin and golden hair in ringlets looking back at me. She was tilting her head all the way back over her chair, it didn’t look comfortable. She blinked twice, that is to say a transparent eyelid blinked from out to in, then her normal eyelids blinked the usual way. I was totally thrown off by this and just kind of stared.

“Oh ho! Now he’s captivated by my beauty!”

More laughter. I blinked my eyes and shook my head a bit. “Sorry. Never seen the... eyelid... thing...” Because I’m an idiot, I even made little windshield wiper gestures over my eyes. I could just cast shadowCloud and run away right now, right? Or maybe I could die. I could just die. Maybe by meteor.

“Rude,” she snorted and sat back in her chair properly.

Gree let out a full belly laugh and slapped the table while the gnome became very interested in their mug of ale. The human pulled on his cheeks and said “Oh my gods, that weirds me out SO MUCH but I’ve been trying not to say anything!”

The room erupted into laughter and the lizard girl crossed her arms with a huff.

“Eric! I can’t believe you! I thought you liked my eyes!”

The gnome now sprayed whatever she was drinking all over Eric, I thought Gree was going to have a heart attack he was laughing so hard. Eric tried apologizing but the lizard girl gave him the cold shoulder. Gree came around the table and slapped me on the back, hard, and put his arm around my shoulders.

“I haven’t laughed that hard in ages! Come drink with us, friend! I’m Gree, our mage is Traluna, that idiot is Eric, and this one here is our healer Sarissa. What’s your name?”

“Carnivac! There you are!”

I turned to see Elita the orc coming down the stairs.

“We’ve been worried, wondering what happened to you. Sorry guys, my little brother here wasn’t causing you any trouble, was he?”

“Little... Brother?” Sarissa asked.

“Adopted,” Elita and I said in unison.

Elita had most assuredly saved me from almost certain death. “Come on,” she said as she pulled me by the hand towards the stairs.

“Well, it was nice seeing another wolf. Good to meet you Carnivac, I’ll remember you. Come on guys, we have a job to do,” Gree said to his team. For just a moment I saw a touch of sadness in his eyes but then it was gone and he was back to smiles and laughter. Gree and the others left an overly generous amount of money on the table and headed out the door without another word.

When we got back up to the rented room, Shea and Elita told me that they had interviewed a number of people and even spoke with the mayor about what had happened at Shady Grove. Everyone they had spoken to, was pretty tight lipped about it or didn’t know anything. Some said it was the work of demons, others said that the barrier must have failed and a pack of monsters got them. It was all pretty useless information and rumor, really, and I couldn’t help but recall the useless things that NPCs or Non-Player Characters in games like Final Fantasy will tell you in various towns.

The church in this village had a small orphanage so Shea had handed Matty over to them. They’d thought about bringing him back to Urd but we really weren’t in any position to care for him long term, or even to transport him all that way. The fact that he was so terrified of me, still weighed on my mind but I was told that I was overthinking it.

I had been absently petting Sparky in my lap and retrieved an acorn for him from [Inventory] but he was now completely asleep. Poor guy must be all worn out. I set him gently onto the fire resistant pad we’d made for him and was about to ask Shea about something when she dropped her sword, that she’d been polishing, with a clatter and just wobbled with a dazed look on her face.

“She okay? I guess she’s really tired too?”

Elita looked on alert, “You don’t smell that?”

Smell? I turned my sense of smell back on and got warning alarms for high concentrations of various chemicals. I had no idea what they were though. “What is this? I’m detecting a lot of whatever this is”

“It’s been creeping up this whole time, you didn’t seem to be worried about it so I didn’t say anything.”

Damn it, maybe I shouldn’t be turning off stuff I don’t understand. We heard a loud noise come from down stairs and jumped up. I rushed over to the door while Elita looked out the window.

“I’m seeing some figures slinking around, no heat though, maybe undead?” she said before jumping out with sword drawn.

I watched after her and couldn’t help but think she was a lot better at this hero thing than I was. I closed the door behind me and vaulted down the stairs. I found a small cloaked figure hunched over top of one of the pub’s patrons. Heat and blood was rapidly leaving the body from a chest wound. None of the other patrons were stirring though and all just sat there or slumped in a daze like Shea had been. The figure looked up at me and I saw two glowing red pin-pricks of light beneath the hood. It cocked its head to the side in a confused way before pushing the body down to the floor and launching itself at me.