“Depending on the region, sometimes the local wildlife, just the wild animals mind you, not the monsters, need to be added to the category of hazards one might face along the way. In some routes wild animals might only be a minor inconvenience, but in others, they were a downright hazard.

The routes that headed to Alfheim are one of the most dangerous routes to traverse in Alcidea, given how the plains it traveled through was filled with wildlife of all sorts. In Ur-Teros to the south, the most dangerous routes would probably be the smaller routes in the central region of the Elmaiya Empire during the height of summer. They aren’t as well-patrolled as the larger routes, and during summer is when all the beasts come out and are the most active.” - Sophocles Stefanus, international merchant.

“Whoa!” exclaimed Celia with surprise as a large moose suddenly crossed the road not two steps ahead of her. The beast did not even seem to notice her while it passed from the forests that lined one side of the road to the other side where it disappeared before long, but its sheer size and mass still made Celia nearly jump in surprise regardless.

After all, the beast had easily been two and a half meters tall at the shoulder, with a rack of antlers that would have been the envy of many.

“That’s a big one,” noted Celia after the moose disappeared into the forest on the other side of the road and she continued walking alongside Aideen. Aideen herself looked unbothered by the sudden appearance of the beast, other than a slight moment early on where she seemed to be on guard. “Do all the beasts around here grow that big?”

“Not all of them, but many do,” said Aideen in reply. “You won’t be seeing many of them until spring comes or we go deeper into the hotter regions, but there’s many big predators in these forests,” she added. “It’s just that many of them hibernate during the winters out here, which is sort of why that innkeeper said that it’s safer to travel in the winter around here.”

The wintertime in eastern Elmaiya where they were at the time was mild, all considered. There were at most thin layers of ice over ponds and lakes, and snowfall was common, but the cold never really hit the bone-chilling levels it had back in the Jarldoms, and it had been autumn when they were in the Jarldoms too!

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“How big? The predators I mean.”

“Well, you saw the moose just now, no?” Aideen asked back. “The predators in question would be eating that, with some of the larger ones big enough to take it down in a couple bites, so that should answer your question.”

“Two bites!?” yelled Celia with surprise and some exasperation before she thought how big a beast must be to be able to eat a moose as large as the one that crossed her path just now that easily. It did not take her too long to come up with an answer. “Damn, that’s got to be some huge thing then. Although we don’t have to fear dying from them, I’m glad now that they’re hibernating instead of roaming around.”

“Oh yeah. Getting eaten won’t kill us, but I would not say it’s a pleasant experience at all,” replied Aideen wryly with a smirk on her face. She had been eaten alive – even did so on purpose that one time with the sea serpent – quite a few times and would definitely not vouch for the experience. “Trust me when I say that, girl. I speak from experience.”

“So you’ve been… eaten alive before?”

“Not on purpose, mostly, other than that one time the beast was just too big that killing it from inside was way less trouble than doing it from the outside,” replied Aideen with a shrug of her shoulders. “I will say that it’s generally an unpleasant and almost always disgusting experience though, so I wouldn’t resort to it unless it was the best option there.”

“Makes me wonder what sort of beasts it would take to make that the best option, but-”

Celia’s words were cut off by a gasp of surprise as another beast crossed the road, this time emerging from the other side.

The beast resembled some sort of ungodly mixture between a warthog – mostly from its rather rotund body shape – and a wolf, with a proportionately tiny tail behind, ending in a tuft of fur. The beast itself measured at least three meters tall at the shoulder, and half again as long, its large body covered in coarse gray fur.

Its head resembled a wolf the most, albeit with a snout that seemed too wide, and sharp fangs that jutted out from both above and below, the most prominent of which being a pair that jutted upwards like a boar’s tusks near the end of its snout. Its dark eyes seemed to observe the pair of woman for a moment before it turned away and ignored them as it crossed the road with ponderous steps.

Carried within its maw was the massive moose they saw just moments ago, its neck shredded horribly by the fangs of the creature, and given how the bleeding had mostly slowed to a trickle despite the large, gaping wounds, it was likely that the moose had long bled to death already. With that sort of prey already in its maw, the beast ignored Aideen and Celia as it vanished into the forest.

All it left behind was a trail of blood that streaked across the road where it passed.

“See? Lots of big things around here that’d easily eat you whole. For a lot of them, we’d probably find it easier to kill them from inside their stomachs than from the outside, honestly,” said Aideen after a moment of silence passed. “Though of course, the best course of action is to not be in a position to get eaten at all, if possible.”