Chapter 3 – The Village
Morning brought clarity, if not comfort.
Two moons had hung over the forest through most of the night—one coppery and low, one silver and distant—but when Ethan cracked his eyes open, only the copper one remained, sinking toward the treeline like it was reluctant to leave. The other was gone, replaced by a sun in the east that looked as if it couldn’t decide how bright to be. Light filtered through the canopy in long, warm shafts, catching dust and pollen and the occasional drifting insect that flashed through the beams like a tiny lantern.
Ethan woke stiff and sore, his back protesting the night spent on packed earth beneath a hastily-built shelter. His neck felt like it had been folded into an angle the human body was not meant to hold for eight hours. For a moment, he forgot where he was—until Pixie licked his face with puppy-breath enthusiasm.
“IT’S MORNING!” her thoughts burst through the bond. “YOUR BRAIN IS AWAKE! MINE’S BEEN AWAKE FOR HOURS!”
Ethan groaned, pressing his palms against his temples. “Inside voice, Pixie. Please.”
“This IS my inside voice!” she insisted, tail whipping back and forth with such force it seemed to blur.
She punctuated her statement with three sharp, high-pitched barks that echoed through the clearing.
“AND THIS IS MY OUTSIDE VOICE!” she added proudly.
Ethan winced. “I walked into that one.”
He sat up slowly, reaching automatically for a coffee mug that wasn’t there.
His hand hovered in midair like it had forgotten it was empty, then dropped. The dented Yeti sat nearby, cold and useless, a little patch of home that somehow made the rest of the world feel farther away. The handle was scuffed. The lid had a hairline crack along the edge. He’d grumbled about it being empty. Now he would’ve paid anything for it to be full.
“God, I would murder someone for coffee right now,” he muttered, rubbing his face. “One cup. Black. No sugar. I’m not even being picky.”
From the bond, Buster projected a grumbling, offended awareness.
“You snore,” Buster sent. “Did you know that? You snore. It’s not subtle. I could hear it over the stream.”
Ethan blinked, then exhaled through his nose. “Good morning to you too.”
“I’m just saying,” Buster replied. “If anything was hunting us by sound, it had a target.”
Moose’s presence was steady on Ethan’s right. Even before Ethan turned his head, he knew Moose was awake, watching the treeline with the calm patience of a boulder that happened to have fur.
“He’s been composing that complaint for three hours,” Moose observed.
Buster rolled over with a dramatic huff, eyes still closed in protest against morning’s existence. “Food first. Talking later.”
As if on cue, his stomach growled loudly, the rumble almost comically exaggerated.
“I’m still hungry,” he added. “Very hungry. Extremely hungry.”
Ethan rolled his eyes. “Who are you? Rolly from 101 Dalmatians?”
Buster tilted his head in confusion, one ear flopping forward.
“He’s not a Dalmatian!” Pixie interjected, bouncing in place. “Dalmatians have spots. LOTS of spots! Buster doesn’t have ANY spots. I chased a Dalmatian at the park once and it was all spotty!”
“It’s a movie,” Ethan retorted.
Pixie looked back at him blankly. “A what?”
Ethan rubbed his temples once again, then added, deadpan, “It’s about a lady named Cruella who wants to turn ninety-nine puppies into a fur coat by skinning them.”
Pixie froze.
“WHAT?!”
Her ears flattened in shock. “WHO LET HER BE IN A MOVIE?! THAT’S A MONSTER WITH A COAT! AND A HAT! Probably! Monsters always wear hats!”
Buster blinked. “That… actually does sound horrifying.”
“Well…” Ethan hesitated. “It’s a cartoon. For kids.”
Moose stared at him. “Human children are shown this? As entertainment?”
He shook his head. “That explains a lot.”
Ethan groaned. “Remind me not to tell you how Old Yeller ends.”
A beat, then realization hit him like a delayed punch.
“Wait… is that one for kids too?”
He stared into the trees for a second, like he was replaying old memories and not enjoying what he found. “How did I grow up on this stuff? Half of those kids’ movies are murder, dead parents, and somebody trying to kill a dog. And we all treated it like a fun Saturday.”
Pixie’s ears perked. “Old Yeller?”
“Yeah,” Ethan said, already regretting bringing it up.
Pixie nodded like she’d solved a puzzle. “I bet that old yelling guy also wore a hat.”
He reached for the fire pit, grabbed a stick, and poked at the embers. The fire had died overnight, leaving only the faintest glow buried beneath a layer of white ash. When he scraped it aside, a few coals pulsed red, stubborn and alive.
“At least the coals are still hot,” he said. “Should be able to get it going again without another hour of torturous fire starting.”
His gaze drifted toward the boar carcass, still impaled on the broken sapling. In the pale morning light, it looked even more grotesque than before—flesh beginning to discolor, massive body slumped at an unnatural angle, the whole thing leaning like it had given up mid-fall.
“And I guess I need to hack off another piece of that thing,” Ethan added. “Though without a knife, it’s going to be another massacre.”
Moose stood at the edge of their camp, attention focused downstream. Unlike the others, he’d been awake and alert for hours, silently keeping watch.
“We should follow the water,” Moose said, calm and clear. “Where water flows, people gather. Find tools. Real food.”
Ethan looked from the sad embers to the mangled boar carcass and back again. His body ached, his mouth tasted like cold smoke, and the idea of spending more time here—more time ripping meat off a dead monster with a sharpened rock—felt like a bad joke that would keep getting worse.
“You know what?” he said finally. “You’re right. Let’s pack up and follow the stream. I’d rather take my chances finding civilization than spend another hour mutilating that poor dead pig.”
Buster’s ears drooped instantly. Uncertainty threaded through the bond.
“But…” he projected. “What if there aren’t people? Or what if they’re dangerous? Then we’d have no food at all.”
He looked back at the carcass. Then at Ethan.
His lower lip quivered. His big brown eyes widened, shimmering with earnest, long-practiced sadness. The look that used to get him extra treats under the table.
Except now it wasn’t a reflex. It had timing. It had intent.
“One more leg,” Buster offered, all innocence. “For safety. Because you’re so smart. You always think ahead.”
Ethan narrowed his eyes. “Are you trying to manipulate me with compliments and puppy dog eyes?”
Buster’s tail wagged once. His lip kept quivering.
“Is it working?”
Moose’s tone remained dry, almost clinical. “He’s getting better at this. The lip quiver is new.”
Pixie was already bouncing. “I’M HUNGRY TOO! ONE MORE LEG! ONE MORE LEG!”
Ethan sighed, utterly defeated. “Fine. One more leg. Then we’re leaving.”
As he returned to the grisly task of hacking off another piece of boar meat, he muttered, “He didn’t even need the intelligence upgrade for this. He’s always been good at guilt trips. Now he’s got better tools.”
He worked with what he had—stone, leverage, persistence—until he had enough meat to justify the effort. When his hands started to cramp, he forced them open and closed, then wiped them on his already-ruined clothes and tried not to think about how badly he missed soap.
They ate a hasty breakfast of boar. Cold and unseasoned, the meat had acquired that slightly gummy texture of cooked protein that had sat out overnight. Nobody complained, which said more about how hungry they were than how good it tasted.
Ethan chewed methodically and, between bites, pulled up his stat screen.
[Status: Ethan Cross]
[Level: 2]
[Class: Arcane Tamer – Variant]
[HP: 118/120]
[MP: 1260/1260]
[STR: 14 (Base: 8 + Mirror Link: Buster)]
[DEX: 8]
[AGI: 13 (Base: 8 + Mirror Link: Pixie)]
[CON: 16 (Base: 8 + Mirror Link: Moose)]
[INT: 22]
[WIS: 16 (Base: 8 + Mirror Link: Moose)]
[CHA: 6]
[LUK: 5]
[Stat Point Available: 1]
[Skills:]
[Pack Bond (Passive) – Enables mental communication with bonded companions]
[Mirror Link (Passive) – Stat sharing between Tamer and bonded companions]
[Basic Directive (Active) – Issue simple tactical commands to bonded companions]
[Command Surge (Active) – Temporarily boost Pack coordination and response time. Cooldown: 10 min]
[Traits: None selected]
Ethan studied the numbers. His programmer brain started sorting them automatically—what mattered now, what could wait, what would keep them alive, what would keep the Pack alive.
INT was his highest by a wide margin. And the system had already made it clear: what he gained, they gained. Mirror Link flowed both ways in a way that didn’t feel metaphorical. It felt like a circuit.
He put the stat point into INT.
The number ticked from 22 to 23, and something in Ethan’s mind sharpened at the edges, like cleaning a smudged lens. He didn’t become a different person. He didn’t suddenly understand the secrets of the universe. He simply felt… clearer. Faster to connect a thought to the next thought.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Through the bond, he felt that same sharpening ripple outward.
“That’s weird,” Buster sent. “Something just clicked. Like a joint settling into place, except inside my head.”
“That was Ethan adding a point to intelligence,” Moose replied. “We get his full INT through the link. When he gets smarter, we get smarter.”
“Great,” Buster sent. “More math. Exactly what I wanted.”
“I CAN THINK LOUDER NOW,” Pixie announced through the bond.
“That’s not how it works,” Buster shot back.
“MY THOUGHTS ARE BIGGER,” Pixie insisted.
“They’re really not,” Buster replied.
“THEY ARE AND YOU CAN’T PROVE OTHERWISE,” Pixie declared.
Ethan smiled despite himself, closed the stat screen, and stood. His body still hurt, but beneath the soreness was something new and undeniable—a stronger baseline. The stats weren’t abstract. He could feel the difference in the way his legs handled uneven ground, the way his arms lifted bundles of wood without the strain he expected, the way his eyes tracked movement in the underbrush.
Moose watched him rise. Even with the wound on his side, Moose’s posture remained solid, steady, built to hold ground.
Ethan’s gaze drifted to the boar again. The carcass sagged against the broken sapling, heavy and wrong, already starting to turn. Even if he’d wanted to salvage more than meat, it was still a massive dead thing pinned in the dirt.
He wasn’t dragging that through the forest.
“Alright,” Ethan said. “Let’s move.”
After that, they packed up camp properly—what little there was to pack. The shelter came down in pieces. The fire pit was scattered and cooled as best they could manage. Ethan didn’t like leaving signs behind, even if he didn’t know who would find them.
Then they started walking.
The morning sun filtered through the canopy, dappling the ground with shifting patterns of light. The stream gurgled beside them, clear and inviting, running downhill as if it had somewhere important to be. The forest changed gradually—trees thinning, undergrowth shifting from ferns and moss to lower shrubs and wildflowers. The sky showed through in broader patches overhead, violet threaded with pale blue near the horizon.
Pixie darted ahead, then back, then ahead again—a perpetual motion machine fueled by curiosity.
Moose walked steadily at Ethan’s side, his presence calm and reassuring. He moved like he was guarding Ethan without needing to look like he was guarding Ethan. It was subtle. It was competent.
Buster brought up the rear at first, then drifted forward, then back again, adjusting constantly as if he couldn’t decide whether he preferred scouting or supervising. He complained about the pace, but he never fell behind.
As they walked, Ethan realized something had shifted.
The dogs no longer moved like pets—circling, distracted, tugging at some invisible leash.
They moved like a unit.
Like a team.
He wondered if they felt it too—this new dynamic forged by the Mirror Link. He could sense the overlaps through the bond now, not as words, but as awareness. Moose noticed the firmness of the soil and the places water had risen and receded. Buster tracked scent trails—animal, plant, mineral—cataloging them with a thoroughness that bordered on obsessive. Pixie detected motion and sound at ranges that made Ethan’s ears feel ornamental.
Together, they covered the forest like a living sensor array.
“This is actually incredible,” Ethan said after a while. “I can’t see through you literally, but I know what you’re noticing. Moose, you feel the ground changing. Buster, you’re picking up something metallic. Pixie… there’s a bird forty feet up in that tree that’s been following us.”
“It’s not an oak,” Moose sent, without any hesitation. “The bark is wrong. The leaves have six points, not five. This world’s trees resemble what we know, but they aren’t identical.”
“The metallic smell is iron,” Buster added. “Rust. Something man-made is upstream. Or was.”
“Different birds,” Moose noted aloud, ears perked at a call overhead that didn’t match anything Ethan recognized.
“LOUDER birds,” Pixie added, jumping to snap at a low-flying creature with iridescent wings.
“Stop that,” Ethan said automatically. “We don’t know what’s poisonous here.”
“Wise,” Moose replied.
Pixie made a sound that was half-offended, half-itchy with restraint, then trotted in a tight circle and pretended she hadn’t been thinking about chasing it.
“THE BIRD IS PURPLE AND I WANT IT,” she sent anyway.
“You are not eating mystery birds,” Ethan said.
“YOU CAN’T PROVE I WAS GOING TO.”
“Your whole body was pointing at it like an arrow.”
Pixie’s ears flattened. She did not chase the bird. She did stare at it with enough concentrated intent that the bird relocated to a tree farther away.
Found something! Smells weird!
Pixie turned and dug frantically at the soil near the stream’s edge. Ethan jogged up, knelt beside her, and brushed the dirt away. His fingers hit something solid and curved.
A horseshoe. Old and rusted, but unmistakable.
Ethan turned it over in his hand. It wasn’t glowing. It didn’t pulse with magic. It didn’t need to.
It was proof. Someone had lived here. Worked here. Used animals. Built roads.
“Okay,” he said softly. “That’s something.”
Moose stepped beside him. “Old trail. But this seems man made.”
Pixie sniffed the metal and sneezed. “Smells like foot-metal!”
Ethan pocketed it.
They kept walking—following the stream, and this time, it felt like it was leading somewhere.
Buster’s stomach rumbled again, because of course it did.
“Are we there yet?” Buster asked.
“We don’t even know where ‘there’ is,” Ethan replied.
“Somewhere with food,” Buster said, as if he were stating a universal law.
They followed the stream for another hour, the terrain sloping downward. The brook widened from a narrow run to something closer to a steady flow, murmuring over smooth stones. The canopy opened, and sunlight came through in larger sections. The air changed too—less pure forest, more mixed scents.
Then they crested a small ridge, and Ethan stopped abruptly.
In the valley below, thin trails of smoke rose into the sky, steady and deliberate. Not the chaotic flicker of a forest fire, but the controlled output of hearths and chimneys.
Hope flared in Ethan’s chest so fast it almost hurt.
“Smoke like that means people,” he said, pointing. “Actual civilization.”
Moose tensed beside him. “Caution. People aren’t always safety.”
“People mean FOOD!” Pixie bounced.
“Do people have bacon?” Buster’s entire demeanor brightened.
They stood for a moment, taking in the sight. From this distance, Ethan could make out wooden palisades surrounding a cluster of buildings. Thatched roofs. A central well. People moving about. An honest-to-god medieval-style settlement.
“Real people,” he whispered. “I mean, I assumed there would be, but…”
“Smells different,” Moose observed. “Not like home-people.”
Buster lifted his head, nostrils flaring. Through the bond, Ethan felt him parsing the air with a precision Ethan still wasn’t used to: smoke (wood-burning), animal dung (multiple species, concentrated), cooking fat, tanned leather, and beneath it all, the baseline scent of habitation—sweat, soap, enclosed spaces, and the faint staleness of a life lived indoors.
“Quarter mile,” Buster sent. “Maybe less. Wind’s carrying it clean.”
“Okay,” Ethan said. “Game plan. I need best behavior here—no barking at birds, no running after smells, and definitely no body-slamming villagers.”
“We’re not stupid,” Buster huffed.
“I know,” Ethan said, “but they don’t know that. To them, you probably look like… I don’t know, wild animals or something.”
“Wild animals?!” Pixie seemed offended. “I’m much prettier than a wild animal!”
Moose’s ears flattened. “We should approach slowly. Show we’re not threats.”
Ethan nodded. “Right. Let me do the talking. At least out loud.”
They picked their way down the slope, Ethan’s heart accelerating with each step.
Up close, the village looked like it belonged on the edge of the world: functional buildings built for use, not beauty. The palisade was real wood, weathered and repaired in places, not a decorative fence. A watchtower leaned slightly, rough-hewn and practical. The gate stood open.
Two guards were stationed there, both holding spears. Leather armor reinforced with metal plates. The spears showed signs of use—nicks in the shafts, weathered bindings where blade met pole. These weren’t costume pieces; they were tools that had done work.
The guards straightened as the Pack approached, grips tightening.
“Hold there!” one barked.
Ethan stopped, hands raised slightly. “Not looking for trouble.”
Then he froze.
Wait.
That wasn’t English. It didn’t sound like English. The consonants were wrong. The cadence was wrong. The structure was wrong.
But he’d understood it.
And what had Ethan just said?
He opened his mouth again, just to test it.
“I’m not looking for—” He stopped. The words felt normal in his mouth, but the sound was subtly off. The tone. The shape of it. Like he was speaking with a different set of muscles he didn’t know he had.
It wasn’t English.
I’m speaking another language. I’m speaking another language and understanding it like it’s English.
His brain spun in tight circles.
Is this magic? Is this a system thing? Do I have a language skill? Is this permanent?!
The guards were still there, still watching him, spears ready. His dogs were still beside him, calm in a way he didn’t deserve.
Ethan forced air into his lungs and made himself focus.
“Uh…” he said, blinking hard. “Sorry. Long day.”
“Traveler,” Ethan said, and the word came out in a language that wasn’t English, shaped by his mouth as naturally as if he’d spoken it his whole life. “Came from the forest. Had some trouble with a boar.” He nodded back toward the treeline behind him. “Looking for a place to rest. Maybe find work.”
The guards stared—not at him.
At the dogs.
One stepped forward, squinting at Ethan and his companions.
“A Tamer?” the guard asked, gaze moving from Buster to Pixie to Moose. “With three beasts? What manner of creatures are these? They have the look of wolves, but…” He frowned, studying them more carefully. “Strange coloring. And that big one’s build is unlike any wolf I’ve seen—and is that a mini wolf?”
“They’re not wolves,” Ethan said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. “They’re… special companions.”
“VERY special!” Pixie barked, jumping up and down, delighted by being called a mini wolf.
The guards’ eyes widened at the unnatural agility. Ethan winced. This was going to be a long day.
“Those beasts tame?” the taller guard asked, spear still ready.
“Bonded,” Ethan said. The word felt right as soon as he used it, like vocabulary the system had quietly slid into place. “They’re my companions.”
The guard stared at Moose.
Moose stared back.
It wasn’t a contest. Moose simply held the man’s gaze with the calm, unblinking patience of a dog who had been looked at by better men and found them all roughly equivalent.
The guard swallowed.
“Where did you come from, stranger?” the guard asked, tightening his grip again. “Don’t recall seeing anyone matching your description at Carlston or Rivermouth. And those are the only villages within days of travel.”
“I’m… new to the area,” Ethan said carefully. “Been traveling for some time.”
“Without supplies?” the second guard gestured toward Ethan’s clothes. No pack. No weapons beyond a dented mug.
“Had some trouble,” Ethan said. “Bandits. Lost my gear.”
Too much detail makes lies obvious. Keep it simple, Moose advised through the bond.
Ethan took that advice immediately and shut his mouth before he could add anything else.
“And what brings you to Virestead?” the taller guard asked. “Not much here for travelers except the trade road.”
“Looking for a place to rest,” Ethan said. “Maybe find work. Trade, if I can.”
The guard’s eyes flicked to the dogs again.
“You’ll need to register those companions at the Adventurer’s Guild,” the taller one said. “All bonded companions must be on record. It’s the law.”
Ethan nodded. “Understood.”
The guard stepped aside, still watching Moose like Moose might decide to eat him if Ethan blinked too long.
“Don’t cause trouble,” the guard added, then hesitated, as if the rest of the sentence was awkward to say out loud. “And keep your… companions… under control.”
“They’ll behave,” Ethan said.
Through the bond, Pixie sent, “Define behave.”
“It means what you think it means,” Moose replied.
“That’s very limiting,” Pixie said.
“Yes,” Moose agreed.
Ethan walked through the gate, and the Pack walked with him, and for the first time since the world folded, he stepped onto ground that other people called home.
Virestead was exactly what it looked like from the outside—a small, working frontier village that existed because the land around it needed farming and the road through it needed a stop. The main road was packed dirt, rutted from wagon wheels, running north-south through the center of town. Buildings lined both sides—mostly wood, some with stone foundations—built for function over aesthetics. A general store with open shutters. A smithy belching smoke. Something that looked like a tavern, its sign swinging in a light breeze.
People watched them pass.
Not with immediate hostility, but with the careful, evaluating attention of people who lived on the edge of the wild and measured every newcomer as either useful or dangerous. A woman carrying a basket of vegetables paused to stare at Moose. A child peered around a doorframe, eyes wide. Two men at the smithy stopped their conversation and watched the Pack move down the road with quiet intensity.
Nobody approached. Nobody fled. They watched, calculated, and continued with their morning.
“They’re wary,” Moose sent. “But they aren’t panicking.”
“The big one at the smithy has a sword,” Buster added. “Short blade. Well-used. He’s measuring us.”
“THE CHILD HAS A COOKIE,” Pixie sent. “I CAN SMELL IT. IT’S OATMEAL. ETHAN. THE CHILD HAS A COOKIE.”
“Focus, Pixie,” Ethan said.
“I AM FOCUSED,” Pixie replied. “I AM FOCUSED ON THE COOKIE.”
Ethan kept walking.
At the far end of the central square stood the building the guard had mentioned: a squat stone structure with a green door. A weathered wooden sign above the entry bore a carved sword crossed with a quill. In a strange script that his brain parsed automatically, it read:
VIRESTEAD GUILD OFFICE — REGISTRY AND CONTRACTS
If there was a place in this town that would know what to do with a man, three dogs, and too many questions, it was here.
Ethan drew a slow breath, steadying himself.
Inside, the scent of parchment and pipe smoke hung in the air.
Time to see what kind of adventurer he’d just become.
