The village was worse off than Sam’s description had at first led me to believe, and yet, it had its perks.

Hoc Allud. A gray stone wall surrounded the small farming village and its surrounding fields a wall covered in pock marks where the Wendigo had collided with it and clawed at it. And yet the village itself stood at the center of eight large fields with only a small fence around the homes and businesses.

I expected to find crops and sheep dotting the fields, but they were empty, as if everything had been trimmed away.

“Their cannibalistic, dark magic,” said Sam, noticing my gaze.

“Cannibalistic?” I asked, wondering if the potion we’d helped create was the explanation and hoping our involvement wouldn’t come up.

“I see they told you little of their true nature.”

“They greeted us as friends,” I said. “We…thought we were helping them.” I hoped he couldn’t see the guilt on my face.

“Well, no matter what you did, I’m sure you didn’t know what they are or how they’ve crippled us for the past half century.”

He explained how the Wendigo and his people were once of the same great nation, Hoc Alludess, with Hoc Allud as its capital. It was a warlike nation at first, conquering all the surrounding countries until just Hoc Alludess remained.

But as the nation grew and ran out of enemies, they found themselves hoarding endless treasures with no one to trade them with and no one to lord over with them. So they filled bunkers with their gold and crowns of fallen kings, slowly putting them to work on improving their country.

And although they had peace, their accountants believed their nation’s last king was embezzling. And, dedicated as they were, the men and women trudged through a seemingly endless snowstorm to examine the bunkers in person, not knowing how long they’d be there.