If Riley hadn’t spent the past few nights sleeping in the unpleasant wilderness, with nothing but snow for a blanket, he would have felt more uncomfortable about sharing a bed with a talking rodent. The bed itself was a scrawny mattress barely lined with hay. But it felt absolutely heavenly that night, the most comfortable bed Riley had ever slept in.

Come the morning, heralded by the crowing of a heinously loud bird, Riley rose quickly and got set for the morning. Save for removing his boots he had slept fully clothed, which suited Riley just fine against the stinging chill.

“You figure we’d be able to buy a horse with the funds we have?” he asked as he adjusted the latches of his mask.

“That seems... unlikely,” Arubis admitted, managing a comforting smile.

“Yeah... guess I figured as much.”

A shame. Horse meat is quite delectable, Mesquard said, clambering up Riley’s sleeve and into his pocket.

Riley frowned. “I wouldn’t know.” And he hoped to never know, if he could help it.

Food was, originally, not included in the deal for their room. But a few kind pleas to the innkeeper from Arubis yielded them a thin, grey gruel to eat. Which was, as with the bed, objectively unpleasant but subjectively quite edible after days of poorly grilled steak.

When it came to food, resources were scarce. The winter had been harder than usual, diminishing the amount of grain in the silos. The fish in the rivers, similarly, had grown scarce. And illness was spreading through the livestock of some of the outlying farms. They had to be content with what they could get, he supposed.

They left the inn behind, and were greeted by a thin miasma of fog lining the streets. Few people were out and about. Those that were either watched Riley cautiously from their porches, or gave the duo a wide berth in the streets. Warden or not, his attire made him a subject of wariness.

Riley didn’t mind too much. Even if this town had a Lodestone, he doubted he’d ever have reason to come back.

“Now then,” Arubis said, reaching into a pocket on her robe and pulling out a rolled parchment that seemed far too big for the pocket, “I was able to acquire this from a preacher at the local temple. He was quite content to lend his aid to an Oracle.”

“Yeah... people do seem to like you a lot more than me.”

Arubis unfurled the parchment, revealing a somewhat faded map. It sported a sketched outline of Myron’s Pike, and a few dotted lines that signified the roads that led from the town. Riley made note of a few smaller villages on the map, potential rest stops on their journey westward. But what really drew his eye was the sketch of a city, far larger than the outline of Myron’s Pike, on the rim of the map.

“Alderberg,” Riley murmured, running a gloved finger over the text.

“One of the larger eastern cities in the empire,” Arubis said. “Said to be something of a bulwark, last I heard. Though... it’s entirely possible it is suffering under greater strain than an isolated town like this.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“So... it could have collapsed?”

“Perhaps ‘collapsed’ is too strong a word. But it’s possible the city may be facing some manner of threat. Larger population centres draw the eyes of Chaos.”

“Which means it’s possible there’s more Essence to gather,” Riley noted.

“And more strength to be gained!” Arubis chimed.

Then let us be off, noble companions!

The northern gates to the town saw much more activity than the rear one. Travellers came too and fro, guards practised their archery on a crude range, and stable workers tended to a collection of thin, sickly looking horses.

Riley took one look at them and decided he’d probably go faster on foot than half of them. He pressed on, walking along the cobbled road that led from Myron’s Pike. It had been salted for a considerable stretch, a line of stone that cut a path through the blankets of whiteness.

But, eventually, the road ahead was swallowed entirely by the snow. It would have been impossible to tell where it started or ended, were it not for the half-rotted wooden lampposts that flanked the road on either side. There was a gap of twenty meters between each lamppost, and Riley noted an unerring consistency in this pattern.

The journey over the next few days was relatively uneventful. They passed by only a handful of other travellers on the road, who watched them with gaunt faces and tired eyes. Come night, as before, they made camp in any area that provided even a modicum of cover from the elements.

Hunting kept them afloat when it came to food, each dead animal giving Riley a pittance of Essence. Snow, while unpleasant, worked well enough for hydration when nothing else would do. But, eventually, a stream came into view from the road, and he was able to drink from it more than once on their westward push.

Though Riley found, generally, he didn’t need to eat as regularly now as he had in his old life. A small blessing of being a Warden, he supposed.

They were a week out from Myron’s Pike, on the cusp of sunset, when Riley spotted something that gave him pause: A wooden farmhouse with a thatched roof. He huffed into his mask. “Think we could get some shelter here? Ah, hell with it, I’ve gotta try.”

“Of course, Warden,” Arubis said. “It can’t hurt to try!”

Mesquard hummed in the back of Riley’s mind. Caution, noble wizard. The air here, something about it smells... wrong.

“Wrong? In what way?”

I am uncertain. But there’s a foulness to the air that sets my whiskers on edge.

Riley nodded. They had passed only one other Lodestone since leaving Myron’s Pike, but it would still set him back a considerable distance if he died here. But, nothing ventured nothing gained. He clutched his staff and hatchet as he made his way to the rickety structure.

Once he drew close enough, he could see that a part of the thatched roof had collapsed, and the boards on one wall were torn and askew. And the utter darkness inside the house did little to put Riley’s mind at ease.

By the time he could see the shattered remnants of a chicken coop off to one side of the house, Riley knew the place was abandoned. Sad as that was, the building still had a (mostly) intact roof. And, potentially, supplies worth grabbing.

The front door was only barely hanging on the hinges as Riley opened it. A thick coating of dust lined the floor of the entryway, each step leaving a distinct footprint on the floorboards. Riley peered into each room in passing, finding no trace of any humans alive or dead. But he did see signs of a struggle.

Scythe-like clawmarks in the walls, broken floorboards, splashes of blood that had dried into the wood. At least a few days old, by Riley’s reckoning. And he had yet to see a body, or even a discarded body part. Either the people who had been attacked managed to escape with their lives, or whatever had killed them left no traces behind.

“Great,” he eventually murmured, slicing through the silence like a knife. “Something pretty bad must have happened here. But it’s quiet now, at least.”

“Do you... still wish to stay here?” Arubis warily asked. She ran her finger over a table, dragging up a large bale of dust in the process.

“Well... I’m not gonna enjoy it. But it’s nice to go five minutes without having the wind trying to slice through me.” Sleeping in an abandoned home where the previous occupants had either been assaulted or murdered... another thing Riley never thought he would have to do before now.

Mesquard sniffed the air again. It is still... unpleasant here. Death lingers in the air. But there may still be some things here worth pilfering.

“Only one way to find out.” Riley tightened is grip on his hatchet and pressed onward to explore the abandoned house.