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After purchasing some supplies from Amethyston for the journey ahead, you set off on the same road by which you arrived. As before, you meet with no trouble, just the usual traffic of villagers and ox-driven carts, and the occasional patrol to keep the roads safe from brigands. You arrive at Hobcroft by nightfall. It is surprising how much quicker one can travel when there isn't a blind old man in tow, and scenes of a family meal playing in imagination.
The town is an entirely different sight after dark. Rising above, in the distance, the slitted windows of Castle Hobcroft glow from candlelight while the watchfires on the towers pale and deepen, disappearing and reappearing by the pacing silhouettes of the footmen. There are few men about, and most of them of ill repute. Drunkards and penniless gamblers stumbling home to their miserable families. Cutthroats prowling for hapless travelers. A cat or two yowling from atop a fence. Only the taverns and the inns are alight now, and some houses in the tradesmen quarters who are wealthy enough to burn tallow and wax in pursuit of their arts.
Those you encounter in your path that might have accosted you before, now give you a wide berth, sensing in you a certain confidence and self-possession that tells them you are not worth the trouble. You have fought far worse than them and survived, and they know it.
Having made good time, you can rest in town and still make it to Hobley by evening tomorrow. Being on the road at night is always an unwelcome prospect. Patrols are lighter. Bandits are more bold. And there are other, more dangerous things which prowl only at night. Of course, it would be wonderful to arrive before dawn and surprise your family in their beds (your sister, at least--your mother is a light sleeper). And otherwise you'll have to pay for lodgings, either at the rundown inn where you stayed in last, or the more upscale one beyond the bridge in which you met Helmod. You have enough money now that you need not go to bed alone, should you wish to succumb to that particular temptation.
What do you want to do?
>Continue onward to Hobley
>Stay the night in cheap accommodations
>Splurge a little--a warm bath, a hot meal, a full bed
>Write-in
