Wow everyone here wakes up really early. Even Swindle is an early riser, which I would not have guessed. He made a new friend this morning, some pretty elf lady, her name’s Variel! She’s all warm colors. I wonder what she’s doing here in Dunswallow. They circled each other like cats for awhile, so I went and had breakfast with Rhoghun, and that’s when someone from the Menagerie came looking for him. Rhogkun asked him if it was about the wolf, and the guy said he couldn’t say, but you could tell the answer was yes. So we went to see about that, and everyone else kinda followed along.
Humplebumble had his big tophat in hand, and was real nervous, but Rhogkun scared him into getting to the point. Which was yeah, the winter wolf got out. Surprise, right? It froze one of the guards with its magic, and when Max tried to move the poor guy he fell apart into pieces. Rhogkun was hopping mad. And he found a little scrap of cloth by the cage, like what a little kid would wear. But there’s no blood anywhere, and the door was just open, so maybe the wolf took the kid with it? Anyway, Rhogkun says winter wolves are known for their grudge-holding, so it would be back for Delibean for sure. Some people wanted to run away, but I said, that’s not what heroes do, so we all decided to go north and look for the wolf.
Variel followed us! I guess she’s just a real curious type. I kinda get that. We got a little lost following the tracks, and some spiders attacked us in the woods. Not like, regular ones, like BIG spiders. But it was fine because we’re all really strong. And I found out Mr. Swindle has attack-wasps living in his staff?? I’m not sure I feel too good about that. They seemed to listen to him pretty well though. I guess.
The biggest spider got scared and tried to run away, and I shot it down out of a tree! A bunch of other stuff fell out of the tree with it, including a body… Rhogkun touched it! Gross. We took his money which is kinda weird, but i guess, he’s not using it anymore. So now I have 4 gold!
We find the tracks again after awhile, and the big wolf tracks get joined up with by little wolf tracks, and they all go together into this little valley with high walls. Definitely a good place for an ambush, if the winter wolf is that smart. Which I guess it is. So we sneak around the edges, with Variel on one side and everybody else on the other. Pretty soon we find out we were right - Variel shot a wolf with an arrow before it could even notice us. But that’s about as sneaky as we get to be, because suddenly the winter wolf stands up from between some trees and starts talking to us. Variel’s all alone on that side… I hope she doesn’t get eaten.
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