Elan nods seriously.

"Okay! Good luck and don't turn into fruit chunks! Oh, and you should probably make sure the skeletons are the dumb kind and not the smart kind with a soul hidey place."

Mmm, fruit chunks. Elan should see if there's any other fruit he can grab before he and Twilly go to the library.

Lunch is plentiful and delicious, although the mood is brought down a little by Rolith, Baumbard, and a few other knights making battle plans over dessert. 

Maya is working away at her desk when Elan and Twilly enter the library. 

"Hello, Elan! Captain Rolith said you'd be stopping by. I have your reward for helping in the infirmary yesterday." She holds out a little bag of coins. 

"Oh yeah! Thanks, Maya!"

Elan puts the money in his bag; he can count it up later.

"Do you have a map I can look at that shows where Falconreach is? Especially if it shows the Surewould Forest, too."

"Of course! It sounds like you want to see a map that shows the whole kingdom..." 

Maya finds an appropriate map and spreads it out on the desk. 

"Alright, here's a map of Greenguard! Oaklore Forest is this patch of trees here, and this is Oaklore Keep, where we are right now!" she explains, pointing to each place on the map. "If you follow the main road east, across this river here, you'll get to Falconreach in a few hours of walking—at least, when there isn't a hydra in the way. I hope someone deals with it soon! Anyway, if you keep going through Falconreach and past it, you'll reach the south-western edge of Surewould Forest pretty quickly. Do you know where in Surewould Forest you're going? It is quite big." 

On the map, Surewould Forest looks at least twice the size of Oaklore Forest, and stretches a long way to the north. A darker patch of forest, sitting to the south of Oaklore and Falconreach, is labelled as Doomwood. 

Elan studies the map studiously.

"King Splurt said that Boxlord Ulp lives in the south part. So probably here or here?"

He points at the two southern protrusions.

"Maybe Sir Valance will have a sneevil map of the Surewould Forest. Or maybe he knows someone in Falconreach that has the same job as him!"

He looks at the map some more. There's that snowy part up north, and then a part that's still pretty north but not very snowy, and a bunch of mountains, and a desert…

"What's doomy about Doomwood?"

"It's full of lotsa skeletons and zombies and vampires and werewolves and witches and—" 

"It's in an area of permanent night, which makes it something of a haven for undead, werewolves, and other creatures of the night," Maya elaborates. "Apparently it's always a full moon, as well. Historical accounts disagree on how it got that way, but the oldest records speak of a thriving, independent human kingdom in that region, with no mention of the darkness, so it seems like it wasn't always like that!"  

"Whoa, weird! I wonder how that happened. Maybe a wizard stopped time there? Except for the people and monsters, I guess. Are the trees all… night trees?"

"What's a night tree?" 

"Oh, it isn't a real thing. At least, I don't think it is? But trees need sunshine to live, so probably the trees there are either all dead from no sunshine or they can use moonlight instead."

"Well, it's not a region I've studied in great detail, but I know people live there. This map just shows the town of Amityvale, one of the bigger settlements in Doomwood, but there are smaller villages too! And where there are villages and towns, there have to be farms. So, somehow, the moon in Doomwood must be able to grow plants!" 

"Weird!"

Botany is not one of the topics that can nerdsnipe Elan, but it's still pretty cool.

He looks at the map again. He should probably get going…

"Are those two places really in the clouds?"