I awoke to Lannah rubbing my shoulder in little circles. “Arn, it is time to wake up. The sun is coming up and I have breakfast ready.”

I rolled up from my fur and looked around. It was still predawn light, but not by much. Lannah had ready some potatoes and meat. I was starting to be able to smell it, and I saw steam rising from a cup.

This was a way that I could enjoy waking up. Just a few foster parents had cooked for me but never often or long. I had cooked almost every breakfast I had until I was buying them from fast food on my way to work.

“Do they have coffee in Essex?” I asked.

“Yes, they do! It is expensive and bitter but I love it.” She replied as I picked up my tea.

“Thank you for breakfast. I take it the goblins haven’t done much?”

“No I have watched as much as I could without standing out. It seemed like once you went to sleep they did as well.”

“Well, I have a few ideas as to how to deal with them today but I want to make sure you are on board with the plan first.”

Lannah sat down next to the chair and picked up her plate. For me, that was kind of odd. I had been giving her the chair every time we sat near the fire, but now she was giving it to me.

“You sure you don’t want the chair?”

“No, you have it. I am good on the ground.”

I sat down and grabbed my tea. While it wasn’t coffee, it was nice having something warm on a brisk morning, and just about every morning was brisk.

“I had a dream last night. I was part of a group that headed into a dungeon, and it messed up with our party buffs. Do you know if that is a thing about dungeons? I asked.

“Yes, if you party up before going into a dungeon then as people go in the connection drops but reforms once you are through. Same with buffs, they will stop unless the caster on the target are on the same side.” She responded as she was eating.

“Can only 5 people go into a dungeon at a time?”

Lannah swallowed her bit, “yeah most dungeons don’t let more than 5 in. The first time you go to one it will tell you how many can come in. It will seal off after that many pass through and if you try to hold hand or go at the same time well… it gets messy.”

“I think that Blink is in that dungeon that had the bashers and that is why I can’t get a hold of her.”

“That would do it, and I should have thought about that. Everything you said fits with her going in a dungeon or a powerful mage casting a spell to cut us off from everyone else. Which isn’t the case because I can talk with dad.”

“I bet she went in wanting to hunt more.” I smiled and shook my head a bit. Yeah, it would be nice if she was here; however, at least I knew what she was up to.

As we started to eat, I laid out my plan. I had three sets of the fire rain runes. Which meant that I could do the cast three times with enough cloud cover. Before we made the contract, I didn’t have enough mana to do a rapid casting of all of them.

What I wanted to do was to seal Lannah into the storage room, climb the rock wall, and drop the fire rain from above the goblins. Each time I cast, I would dump all my mana in and then pull a full recharge from her. She had enough mana I could drop eight fire rains on them in an overlapping attack.

I would start where the narrowest part of the riverbank was behind their camp. Once that was down, I would drop them moving forward and around. If I could, I would try to pin them in. I had eighty feet or so of elevation to work with once I moved around behind them. Which meant that I could reach just about the whole area.

Lannah looked nervous. “So, you want to lock me in a tomb and climb to the top of the ledge and attack the goblin horde from above?”

“That about sums it up.” I grinned back at her.

“I am not sure I like this idea. What happens if you don’t come back?”

“I am coming back. I have already felt out the contract and it would keep me from leaving you unless there was no other way for me to live and then it would be hard.”

“I know that, I meant what if you die? What do I do then?”

“Well, you could stay in there until you needed to come out or you could come out. I will give you the wand so that you can turn the dirt to stone and back again.”

I could tell that Lannah wasn’t sold. I understood, she wasn’t combat-focused, and there was a horde down there. If they were any smarter, they would already have climbed up the wall, and we would be dead. If they were any dumber, they would have jumped down from above us.

“Look, I want to keep you safe and it will be a while before I can go. I need to make a few more of the rune stones to use for this spell. It isn’t one that I can cast only one that I can make with the runes. Before I go, I will see if there are things that I can make to keep you safer if I don’t get back.”

I saw some tension leave her shoulders, and she slumped down a bit. “Thank you. I don’t know what I would do if you died.”

“Yeah, I made a big error by us coming back here. I didn’t think of how to get you out and now we are stuck. We will figure this out. I will see if I can make the storage room a better place to hide in. For now can you keep watch while I work. I want to focus on making these runes.”

“I can do that, just please don’t leave without letting me know.” Lannah almost pleaded.

“Don’t worry, I am not going to make that climb for a while and we will have you ready for it before then.”

I pulled out my etching equipment and started to work on the runes that I needed to make. I had been putting in the practice needed, and so the work was fast and easy to get the sets I wanted.

Since I could use up to three runes, I was going to see about using fire, strength, and rain. The intent with the rune spell would be a strong fire rain. I figured that it would suck in more mana or would rain for a shorter amount of time. Either way, it should do more damage.

Then I set down to make Lannah a knife. She only had a few combat skills, and the best bet I had was to get her something that was usable for her. I was also going to try to do something for her dress. If I could get her some armor, that would be helpful, but my creations were all ugly. They worked, but that didn’t mean they were something that she would want to wear.

I pulled out the seax and got to work. The blade was such an odd shape for me. It was straight, but the top or back of the blade came back with an acute angle. It made the point long and both the blade and the back parallel. The total length of the knife was only about 14 inches, but it was heavy. It would make a good stabbing weapon, and hopefully, she could use it well.

I then added runes to the seax. I put on my normal strengthen and then added end go. The idea here was that this would stop movement. I wanted her to be able to get away if she needed to. If this could pause someone, then she could either end them, which I didn’t think she could do, or run. Then I imbued it and dropped a core in the handle.

Weapon core created

Weapon core!

Max level 5

As your Weapon levels its helpfulness increases.

General

Showing up in all Orange.

Arn's Seax of Pausing

Level 0

Type Weapon core

Class Enchanted uncommon

Durability 100/100

Weight 2.5 lbs

Length 14 inches

Weapon type: Impaling slashing

Damage: 1-3 impaling, 1 slashing, +1 magical

>Growth

To level your weapon you must provide for it proper care and material.

Metal 0% Mana 0%

>Traits

These are the abilities or traits that your Weapon has.

Durable- Your weapon is durable, it will not wear out from normal wear. Durability will only decrease with targeted attacks. Pause- Your Seax when activated will cause the target to pause for 1 second per successful strike up to 10 seconds. Each strike costs 5 mana drawn from the knife first then from the user up to a total of 50 Mana This Seax has been Imbued with power and can hold up to 15 mana. It can recover 3 mana every day on its own.

I stood and stretched. I had been working for an hour or so on the knife. Things went much faster when I wasn’t having to worry about my limited mana pool. I could just carve and imbue without worrying if I had the power to finish what I was starting.

“Lannah, I got something for you!” I called over my shoulder. Sure there were goblins around, but it wasn’t like my yelling would make them attack any quicker.