Their pursuit of the attackers of the Clan went on for another three weeks.

After the first mountain chain they had to cross a few others, each one a bit higher and broader than the other. The final one before the border was in excess of one thousand meters in height, but hadn’t shown up on Prof’s first map back on the hill overlooking Smallgrovewell. On Earth this kind of mountain chain would have been large (or high) enough to warrant a mention, but on Arkadia it was obviously just small fry.

Mini wasn’t aware, how high the chain further to the North was, but could only say, that is was larger.

The forest they were traversing through – and which covered most of the Domain – changed slowly as they reached higher elevation after each mountain chain. The oaks near the Bergian border gradually gave way to beech, with conifers showing up on higher peaks. The mountain at the Western border were mostly covered by them – not counting the peaks itself, being barren and rocky.

After the debacle with the Pixies, everyone agreed not to let Prof into another town, and even with villages they were cautious. Mostly only Shinead went in, asking about the band of Humans they were after, sometimes buying supplies, but mostly they kept up the speed, walking from dawn till dusk.

A few times they got lucky with random encounters and easy prey, so they could stretch their own supply and even earn some money, selling the fur, claws, teeth, bones or organs. Their biggest windfall was a band of very stupid – or very desperate – highwaymen, earning them almost a gold each from the loot and the bounty. They could even replace the one donkey they lost in an accident with a mule.

This time, they didn’t wait for them to be fleeced, but sold everything to a village at a huge discount – they probably even so lost less than with the official appraisal and taxes.

Travelling for three weeks without much of fighting haven’t helped with levelling up (Mini and Sharpclaw managed nonetheless), but Prof was able to practice some of his utility Skills, earning a few percentages here and there. His [Speech: Elven] reached 90%, [Wilderness Survival] 80%, [Observe] 50%, [Animal Husbandry] a whopping 40% as the ones being the most important.

[Etiquette: Elven], [Culture: Elven], [Laws: Elven] reached a level, where he was barely able to function on Elven society, and he picked up a little bit of [Literature: Elven], [Legends: Elven], [History: Elven] and [Heraldry: Elven]. Finally, even a little bit of the Forestean version of those Skills stuck to him.

He also learned, why a lot of Foxy’s magic spell fizzled, but not the chi ones, despite both being about the same level. First, a few of the chi spells fizzled too, but that was not so obvious as the magic spells. Secondly, casting magic was harder, since the caster had to influence outside energies, while using chi used the casters own, inner energy.

Or something like that, Foxy held a few hours long lecture, but Prof was not really interested in the deepest nuances of mana and chi, so listened only with half an ear.

The border-town they entered, was the largest Elven town he had seen up to that point. According to Foxy the population was around five to six thousand, and that put it as a smaller city in the Domain, the three largest being Counciltree, the capitol with fifty thousand inhabitants, Wave’s Peace the most important harbour with fifty-four thousand and Washedbeach a fortress city in the extreme Southwest with twenty-five.

The names sounded much better in Elvish, but these were the mostly accepted translations, so Prof decided to stick with them, not wanting to contemplate all the nuances in meaning the Elves loved to put into every word.

The town they were about to enter, named Deadbranch (again, the accepted translation), was situated on a low plateau on the direct way to a pass over the mountain range. The other side of the mountains were already in the Valley of Torment proper. The city was enclosed by an earth-and-logs wall, with a wooden tower every hundred meters or so.

“Isn’t it dangerous to build walls out of wood?” Prof asked “Wouldn’t it burn easily?”

“Not really.” Foxy answered “Logs and other materiel for the walls are heavily modified and enchanted. Stone would burn earlier than those logs.”

Entering the city was a long process, the security check for Shinead and Foxy was fast – the guard only took a cursory look at their papers – but for Prof and Mini it was grievous. Every last permit, license and clearance was meticulously checked and double-checked, and after the guard was finished, they were directed to an officer, who interviewed them for another hour.

When the officer was satisfied, they had to pay an entry fee, and were handed entry tickets that were valid for only three days. They were warned, if they left the city, the ticket would lose the validity and they would have to go through the whole process again.

The city inside the walls was nothing like a cramped medieval town, it looked rather like Suburbia – space between houses, a lot of trees and shrubs and flowers and no undesirables (meaning in this case: non-Elves). The population density wasn’t high in the Domain to begin with, with the settlement structure leaning heavily towards lone farms and small hamlets, and the city mirrored this habit of leaving space.

Prof estimated, that true medieval Humans would pack at least four times as many people into the space where only five to six thousand Elves lived. Most of the houses were painted green or brown, with only a few blue, red or yellow ones, and almost no white or grey. Translated into the racial distribution that meant that the overwhelming majority was composed of Green Elves and Beastkin.

This was the first time Prof saw Cat and Fox Beastkin.

Both were small, a bit less than one and a half meters in height, and had nothing to do with the cute fantasy in Earth-culture – they looked like large animals walking on hind legs with a few Human (or Elven) traits, and not Humans with a few (cute) animal features. The Cats were predominantly tabbies, with very few reds or blacks, the other common cat-colours were completely absent.

Also, Prof noticed the gender balance leaning to the female side – it looked like there were twice as many females as males. Coloration and the gender-imbalance may have local causes, and with only around a hundred Catkin present, he could not make an informed guess. The cats behaved like cats did everywhere: lounging on carpets, sleeping or lazily observing the world.

Prof wouldn’t have been surprised of every last one of them had high levels in [Philosophy] – doing nothing but observing the world tended to produce philosophers, after all. Living under a bridge and being perpetually drunk probably helped too…

On the other hand, the Foxkin were full of energy – scurrying around, always in a band of at least three and chittering in a heavy dialect, Prof almost couldn’t understand. They were particularly interested in Prof’s party. In a few minutes, there were about a dozen of them following them, mostly younger ones. All of the Foxkin sported an uniform reddish brown fur, but what had Prof surprised was the different number of tails.

Most had only one (including all of the kits), but there were kin with three, five or seven tails, and Prof thought, he spotted one with even nine – there were only odd numbers of tails for some reason. The more tails one had, the less in number such individuals were.

“More tails mean higher Level.” Foxy clued him in “Sionnach the Cunning, a mystical ancestor is said to had ninety-nine.”

Having so many tails was impractical, Prof thought.

This was the first time Prof saw female Beastkin of any race too. They were a bit shorter and much more slender than the males and had six (small) tits.

After a brief orientation, Shinead dumped them in the city’s only guest house for non-Elves, told them to rest and meet up in the morning and was gone the next minute. The guest house was located in the bad part of the city – bad part meaning in this case a very short alley with four houses in total, one of them being the guest house.

One other was inhabited by a Grey Elf – or cur, as Shinead called them – another by a family of Foxkin and the last a mix of barn, stables and warehouse, with – curiously – an old Human as caretaker.

After settling in, Prof visited the Human next door, wanting to know how a Human ended up on the border of the Domain.

“Good Day, esteemed caretaker of warehouses!” He greeted in Elvish, not knowing where the other Human came from.

A common tongue would have been nice to have, but not even Earth managed to implement one universally (with Chinese being to nearest to common tongue, if one went with “having the most speakers”), and Arkadia was way back in this terms. He found out, most people didn’t care to learn another language, and even if, it was one of the neighbouring countries. Foxy and Mini were outliers, knowing six and five languages respectively, although Foxy’s Greenskinian, Dwarven and Halitchian was very bad.

“Good Day to you, too, esteemed neighbour. How are the ancestors today?” The caretaker answered in fluent Elvish, with no apparent accent. Prof stayed in the Domain long enough to recognize a few dialects, but this wasn’t Red, Green, Yellow, Wolf-Brown or Fox-Brown. That still left a couple of dialects, assuming it wasn’t an accent to begin with – he only had a passing familiarity how the Bergian accent worked for Elvish, not the other Human languages.

“My name is Prof, esteemed caretaker, and I’m new in this city. Would you care for a chat?”

“I’m Aodhan of the Windchaser. Nice to meet you. What news are there from the seas?”

Prof fished his last bottle of Blood Wine from his pack and they started talking.