They came at me first; the six spearmen advanced. They weren’t going to wait for me to come to them. They were at a charge, all six side by side. The two knights looped to my right and came back upriver at me. I had somehow managed in the fight to get my back to the river again.

I smiled as I felt rain start up. It had been a while since there had been rain, and it felt good on my skin. I wasn’t sure how it would feel in a minute, but right now, it was lovely. I slipped my left hand into my pouch once again, lamenting the lack of pockets, and pulled out my sizeable double rune stone.

I pushed all my mana into the stone and ran right at the spearmen. Fighting in the rain is awesome. Not sure if I would like fighting in fire rain, but I knew they would like it less. It was going to be a close one no matter what. I was looking at them charging and the knights coming at me, and I wasn’t going to make it. The knights were going to hit before I got to the spearmen. Which meant that I was going to have to deal with them.

I was just a few seconds from the knights when I threw the rune at the spearmen. It was going to be far enough away to truly matter once the storm kicked up, but it would help some. I turned toward the knights, and for the first time, I could think of triggered-on-purpose combat acrobatics.

I jumped toward the horse on the left and grabbed the leg of the knight, yanking and pulling myself up behind him. Then I tapped the horse twice with the hammer, finishing its charge. Shaman’s rage exploded out, hitting both knights and horses as I pushed myself off the back and into a roll.

I landed hard. Rolling helped, but the bank was full of dirt and stones, not nice grass, so when I hit, I felt my right shoulder give out. My healing from my beltus had already been used, and my mana had already been dumped into the rune. I needed a potion; however, that potion was stuck in my left arm rack mounted to the underside of my shield.

When I came up, my right arm was hanging limp, and the hammer slipped from my hand. I looked around for a moment, trying to find where I was. The few moments on, the knights had dragged me a good two hundred feet from the spearmen who were currently running through fire toward me. The sky had opened up and let loose with a beautiful downpour of fire water. Causing the bones on the spearmen to dry out as they charged at me.

The knights were both down in piles of bones. Having their mana ripped from them when they needed it to recharge their magical bonds made it, so they went quickly. As the skeletons came out of the fire, rain Blink hit them. I hadn’t seen her for the whole fight, but I had seen places she had been.

This type of battle was all wrong for her but finishing off the six skeletons was something that she did quickly. Then, as she came over to me, I saw my mana move up a bit. She had pushed mana into me again. I couldn’t draw it from her, but she could force it to me. Then she sent to my mind, “heals!”

I saw that my mana was just high enough to trigger my minor heal wound, and so I did. My shoulder popped back into the socket, and my sore ribs went away. “Let’s grab gear and good loot and then get to the room. I don’t want to get caught out here again.”

“Smarts”

I ran over to my gear and snagged it up. If we ran, I wanted at least what I came into the battle with. Then it was time to get some more equipment. I dropped my hammer back into my belt and made my way to the knights to check them. They would have the best armor, and while I had been collecting a good bit of armor, I was still missing some pieces that would be nice to have.

Also, I hadn’t been feeding my cores all that much because I had only been grabbing what I needed. I was changing with this battle if I had the time. I was going to try to quick level some of my equipment or a least get some of the requirements met.

The first two knights had nothing much worthwhile on them. Their armor fed my armor, and I moved on, having only found one necklace that wasn’t even magical. One had an arming sword, and I took that as I might end up wanting it. The problem was it was a poor-quality iron sword, and I wasn’t sure it was worth the time.

All the rest of the knights had more rusty equipment. It was hard to tell that the equipment was so bad when fighting them, but it was all old and broken and didn’t even count as much metal. The spearmen got me several spearheads as their spears were the ones that I couldn’t use. The shield wall was all junk as well. When in the fight, it looked better. It was likely what happened with the bowmen as when they died, the magic that was letting their bows work failed, and they broke.

I didn’t take the time that I didn’t have to go through everyone. Once I saw the knights were mostly junk, and so were the spearmen, I headed over to the casters. Their items were magical and tended to last better than what the swordsmen would have. It was in the group of ten that I made bank.

Blink and I were off for the last stretch as the sun was going down. We had finished an hour and a half of hike in just over four. We went for the back door since the last time we were here, there were skeletons at our front door. I wasn’t sure they would be there again, but I needed rest.

Once we settled in and dumped gear, I realized that we didn’t have any food and only a little water. That was one of the reasons we had headed out. We wanted to get here and hopefully hunt. I just wasn’t sure about going back out, and I didn’t know if Blink could handle that herself.

“Blink, can you hunt us up some dinner without getting seen?”

She perked up and turned around to be looking at me where I sat on the floor of the room. She stuck her tongue out, tasting the air, and then cocked her head to the side and blinked at me real slow. Then she vanished. “Hunts meats!”

I got up and walked to the back door and opened it. When I felt her rub my leg on the way past, I closed the door and started to pull out the items that the mages had. I was impressed with everything they were carrying. If I could hunt just skeleton mages, I would be happy. I was sure of it.

That was, of course, unless what I valued, no one else did. It could be that everything that I thought was great was worthless in the world. I was happy with the five rings I had before thinking that stacking two 5% bonuses for mana regeneration was great. It could be when I got to Essex, I found out that they were the lowest of low.

I managed to pick up three more bracelets, 4 rings, a circlet, two wands, and a staff. The staff was the largest and likely the most valuable for someone other than me. It was the staff of aiming. It reduced the cost for ranged attacks by 25% while raising accuracy by 50%. Which made it totally worthless for me.

The circlet was too small for my head as it fit snugly on the head of the skeleton that I took it from, but I was going to try to resize it with magic. I had in the past, so I hoped to do so again as it provided an increase in willpower and a plus two to all necromancy spell levels. I wanted to see if it would apply to me since I was at my max.

The rings got me another that increased mana regeneration, a fire cone ring with two uses, a plant manipulation spell with 4 uses, and one that baffled me a bit, a ring that increased healing spells by 1 level. I was planning on putting cores in all of them, and then I would have a ring on each finger. It would be kind of odd to have so many rings, but I couldn’t deny that they would be helpful.

The bracelets were all the same single-charge shields. I didn’t remember seeing them, so I wasn’t sure they were used. Since they all showed a 0/1 for charges. I knew they had to have been at some time. Perhaps Blink took out the shields, or they fought something else before me.

The wands were control wands for water and dirt. The dirt control might help me make rooms, but I wasn’t sure. It all depended on how the spell worked and if it was worth the effort to control dirt vs. just remove it.

I debated what to do with the arming sword when Blink told me she was back. I thought that it was kind of fast, but she could be fast when she wanted to be, so I opened the back, and she dragged in a dead armored wolf.

I closed the door behind her after dragging in the wolf carcass. I wasn’t much of a fan of eating predator meat, but it wasn’t a bad thing. “Great job! That will be a big meal for us.”

“Theys hunting us so I hunted thems. Theys knows wheres we sleep.”

* * *