Jess followed Gred's gaze. At some point, a young man about Jess's age had appeared in the doorway. He was watching them pack their bags.
"I've got a question for you two," the young man said coldly. "I'm a town guard. What are you doing in Raven Hill with all those weapons?"
Jess looked him up and down. The guy claimed to be a guard, but he wasn't carrying a weapon or wearing a uniform. Was he some idiot pretending to be a guard so he could shake them down for money?
"We're just passing through," Jess said. "We came from Sentinel Hill. Some of our things got soaked when we crossed the Nefriti River, so we're taking a moment to check if anything was damaged."
"Yeah, that's right," Gred quickly agreed.
"I don't trust you," the young man said. "Come with me. Otherwise, don't blame me for what happens."
Jess wondered what a kid like this could possibly do to them. He glanced at Gred, who seemed to get the idea.
Jess suddenly stood, tackled the young man, and pinned him down. The young man let out a wild shout and somehow managed to flip Jess over and hold him down instead. He was just raising a fist when Gred grabbed his arm and lifted him bodily into the air.
"Morgan!"
A girl's voice stopped all three of them in their tracks.
At the far end of the hallway stood a blond girl, staring in shock. She looked blankly at the boy hanging in the air, then asked in a voice close to tears, "What are you doing to him?"
"Who are you to him?" Jess asked.
"I'm his wife," the girl said firmly.
Wife? Jess froze for a moment. This guy looked about the same age as him. Married already?
Then again, that wasn't so strange in the Middle Ages, but still...
"Let me go!" the boy shouted, struggling against Gred's grip to no effect. "Lys, go back! I... I can handle them!"
He was still trying to sound tough, but even the girl, who looked as if she'd never been in a fight in her life, could tell exactly how things stood between the three of them.
"Is he really a guard?" Jess asked.
"He..." The girl hesitated. "Sort of."
"Either he is or he isn't. What's 'sort of' supposed to mean?" Gred turned to Jess. "Should I put him down?"
Jess nodded. Gred tossed the boy onto the floor. He got up in a flash, straightened his collar, and said, "You're pretty strong."
Gred gave a scornful snort. "Never met a dwarf before, kid? Well, now you have."
"So what's going on here?" Jess asked.
The girl hesitated, then finally said, "You explain it, Morgan. I need to go take care of Sarah."
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The three men looked at one another. None of them seemed eager for another fight, but they stayed wary as they went downstairs and sat at a table.
"Morgan, right?" Jess asked. "What do you actually do?"
Morgan kept his eyes on Gred, apparently still on guard. After a while, he answered, "I'm actually a guard from Grand Hamlet, to the east."
"If you're a guard in Grand Hamlet, what are you doing in Raven Hill?"
"I'm from Raven Hill. I went to Grand Hamlet because of Lys, the girl you just saw. My wife. Later, more and more people left Raven Hill, and the guards who used to work here didn't want to stay either. So I asked the guard captain in Grand Hamlet to let me come back. He agreed."
"Why did everyone leave?" Gred asked. "I heard there are still plenty of people over in Grand Hamlet."
"Grand Hamlet is doing all right," Morgan said. "If the gnolls from Redridge Mountains weren't blocking the roads so often lately, life there would be decent. But Raven Hill... Raven Hill..."
He pressed his lips together. "There are werewolves."
Gred frowned. "What the hell is a werewolf?"
"I've never seen one myself," Morgan admitted. "But that's what everyone says."
Jess gave Gred a look of disgust. The dwarf claimed to be sixty or seventy years old, yet he'd never even heard of werewolves.
"They're creatures from human stories," Jess explained. "Half human, half wolf. They're supposed to be strong, and they sneak out at night to eat children."
"What's so strong about something that's half human and half wolf?" Gred said. "Dumber than a human and stupider than a wolf. Sounds useless to me."
Morgan let out an anxious sigh. "You outsiders never believe us."
"You haven't even seen one, and you're so sure they're real," Gred said.
"Someone was attacked by a werewolf," Morgan said. "His chest was torn to pieces. When they brought him back, he kept saying he'd met a werewolf. He died soon afterward. But the next day, before they could bury him, his body disappeared. A lot of people said the attack had cursed him, that he'd turned into a werewolf himself and run away."
"Maybe a ghoul clawed him and turned him into one of the undead," Gred suggested.
"When Raven Hill was thriving, it was famous for its funeral trade," Morgan said. "If someone was bitten by a ghoul and poisoned by its corpse venom, you'd be hard-pressed to find anywhere in the Kingdom of Stormwind better at dealing with it. But this man's wounds were completely different. There was no corpse poison, only terrible shadow energy."
Gred's expression went stiff. "So you're saying nobody actually saw a werewolf?"
"That's right," Morgan admitted.
Then he continued, "You don't seem like bad people. I'm really sorry about earlier. I'm just suspicious of anyone from outside, especially with things the way they are. Whatever you've come here to do, remember: don't go out at night. Whatever you do, don't go out at night. People have said werewolves come out after dark. And even if there aren't any werewolves, Duskwood is far more dangerous at night than during the day."
"Thanks for the warning," Jess said.
"It's my duty," Morgan replied. "I haven't introduced myself yet. Morgan Ladimore. If you run into trouble, you can come find me. Everyone in town knows where I am."
"Gred."
"I'm Jess."
"Good to meet you both. May the Light be with you."
Morgan went upstairs. Jess looked out the door. The town felt even gloomier than it had before.
"You believe that kid's story?" the dwarf asked.
"If that's what he says, we might as well leave the herb gathering until tomorrow," Jess replied. "Can't hurt. There might be fewer walking corpses and animals around in daylight, too. Maybe we can't tell much difference between day and night here, but that doesn't mean animals and the undead can't."
Werewolves certainly existed. In the game, they'd been everywhere in Duskwood, causing havoc across the region.
But Jess remembered that happening much later. It had something to do with an ancient relic left behind after a night elf was killed here: the Scythe of Elune. Could there really have been werewolves in Duskwood more than ten years before those events?
Or maybe Gred was right. Perhaps the locals had mistaken some other monster for a werewolf. After all, werewolf stories had always been popular bedtime tales for children here.
"Good. I'm worn out from traveling all day anyway," Gred said with a yawn. "I'm going upstairs to lie down."
Now that he'd mentioned it, Jess felt sleepy too.
That night, with the dwarf snoring loud enough to shake the room, Jess stared out at the quiet forest beyond the window. It was a long time before he finally fell asleep.