Right as I told the crazy squatter, my name, Blink, came through the window. She was all hiss and hate. Blink’s spine spikes were fully up, and she had inflated her float bags, so she was huge. Her tail was swinging back and forth, and she was staring daggers at Kasidy. I had never seen her so angry or terrifying.

Kasidy backed away from me, tripped over her feet, and went down hard on her backside. She caught herself with her hand before she hit her head, but she dropped my sword, and that was all it took. Blink was on top of her just that fast, keeping her pinned down. It looked like she was about to kill her, as I had seen Blink do this to countless enemies.

“Blink! Don’t kill her!” I yelled. “I need her alive to show us how she got here!”

Blink swiveled one eye back to look at me and then gave one of her patented slow blinks. It was with one eye, so I guess it was a slow wink. She then laid down on top of Kasidy.

Kasidy, for her part, was doing what every person would do if they had a large lizard on top of them dripping saliva on their face. She shrieked! It was the most girlish shriek I had heard in a looong time. Notwithstanding the amount of time I had been alone, but even before on earth. The last time I heard something like that was when a mouse had run out of a drawer and across a coworker’s keyboard while they were typing. That lady never should’ve kept food in her desk drawers.

While the shrieking Kasidy was amusing, I was still tied up, which was something that I needed to fix and fix quickly. If she could figure out how to get out from under Blink, then Blink might end up killing her if she attacked again. I looked at my wrists and noticed that while they were tied, it was one of the worst jobs I had seen. My left wrist, which was the one away from the wall, was tied tightly, but my right one looked like it was mostly loose. My guess had been when she dragged me over to the wooden hammock, she could not reach far enough and got my wrist tied as best as she could, which meant that my arm could slip out.

She had tied me up with strips of fabric that appeared to be from the bottom hem of her dress. It was kind of apparent that this wasn’t planned out at all, or if it was, then it was one of the worst executions of a plan ever. I reached over to my left wrist to figure out the knot to see that it was done with a bow! She hadn’t even done a proper knot, just tied me down with a bow! My legs were equally as poorly secured, and I was up and moving within about five seconds of getting my right wrist undone.

I walked the two steps over and snatched my sword off of the ground, and sheathed it. I was mad both that I was attacked in my home and that I was bested by someone that was quite incompetent. I looked at Kasidy and activated the info scan that I would do on goblins. But unfortunately, it came back with less than I wanted. I guess there were limits on what information I could get on people. Perhaps it is a skill I could get later where I could examine people and know how strong they were.

Human Female (Kasidy)

Level 14

Armor rating 1

Weapons none

Seeing that she was fourteen levels above me, I pulled out my totem and set it up. While I would like not to have a fight in my Thicket, I wasn’t beyond filling the whole thing with poison if I needed to. I also pulled out my Standard and backed to the far wall from where Kasidy was. I didn’t want her included in the bubble.

“Blink! Come over here quick,” I called.

Blink jumped off the now-silent Kasidy and ran beside me. As soon as she was next to me, I activated the Standard. The bubble went up around me, and so I was now relatively safe from this lady. Enough that I felt like we could figure out what was going on without me having to clue her in that I was super weak. My hope was that she wouldn’t be able to scan me as I did her.

“So, Kasidy now that we are both free why don’t we start from the top and you can explain to me why you’re here.” I said as I crossed my arms and looked at the disheveled woman who was climbing to her feet.

She got up and looked at me and then at Blink and moved quickly to the other side of the room. Blink was still hissing at her. I saw her take a deep breath in, and she sighed and sat back down on the floor, and started to cry.

After a few moments of crying, she looked up and said, “This is my home. Bartholomew led me here and gave it to me. He even told me you were coming and that I should be a good host. Yet I failed him. He gave me a nice place to live that has everything I need and then even gave me a task, but I failed. I was mean to you when you first got here!” She got real quiet and almost started to cry again when she muttered, “and and now I might not get to be a good host, and I’ll make him mad at me because of this. I might never get to finish my class….”

I sighed and slowly drew my hand over my face. “I want to know what you mean that he gave you this home. I built this so what do you mean he gave this to you?”

I was still mad, but I was trying to keep it in check. First, because she was 14 levels higher than me, and then second, because I needed this woman to show me how she got here. We were already off to a bad start, and I needed to make it better.

“Well,” sniff, “He led me here when I got lost, and then I found a note from him telling me.” She whimpered.

“What note?” I asked.

Kasidy got up and walked over to the table, and picked up the note that came with my beer. “This note!”

“It says, ‘Try to be kind when they show up and be a good host. I have sent them to be a help to you. I left this for you to help. Bartholomew’ she read in a pleasant voice.” “See! He left this home for me and told me to be kind to you because you would be a help and I knocked you out! Now he is going to be so angry.”

I looked at her, scowling, and muttered under my breath, “you’re the gift… great, I get a panicky crazy lady who attacks me to make up for my location being given away. Not sure if this was a fair trade.”

“That note was to me it came with a bucket of beer.” I flatly stated. “This place I made, not Bartholomew. But, I see how you could get confused with that note and not knowing better.”

“Why would you leave a note from a god just sitting on the table!” She yelled at me. “Do you know how valuable this note is? A note signed by any god is worth so much gold if you were to ever sell it. But it also is a godly level item that bestows blessings on those who have it! Why would you leave it?”

“It was a note card with a gift. I knew who the gift was from but it was just a note and I can’t read anyway.”

“You can’t read?”

“No I can’t read! Don’t know why he left a note when he knows that!”

“The whole message is in the item description….”

“What?”

“Yup, looks like he put it there for you so that you could read it”

“Crap,” I said. “I didn’t even look.” I sighed real deep and felt tension drop out of my shoulders, and I deactivated the Standard. “So you were sent here to help, it looks.” I reached down to Blink and ran my hand over her back, and spoke softly to her. “It’s okay girl it looks like she might be a big help for us.”

I looked up at Kasidy and asked, “so it looks like you were wrong on the tree house why don’t you tell me how you got here?”

Kasidy took a big breath and slowly let it out. She looked up at me with slightly scared eyes and whispered, “you’ll be mad with me when I tell you. I heard what you told your pet.”

Blink humphed before I said anything and turned her back slightly to Kasidy. “She is my bonded not my pet and I think you offended her by calling her that.” I chuckled and kept going. “Now why would I be mad with you telling me how you got here?”

“I got lost and followed a light here, so I don’t know how to get back to where people are.” Kasidy chirped. She sagged her shoulders, looking quite dejected.

Then Kasidy looked over at Blink and bowed her head a little. “I am sorry I called you a pet I didn’t know. Please forgive me for my error.”

“Fine we will figure that out one way or the other I guess.” I said weakly.

We kind of just looked at each other for a bit until she started to hum. When she did, it seemed like the worst of it was over, and I could be a bit more relaxed. I still had things to do today, and her being here wouldn’t change much. Well, it changed everything but still not much. I still needed to hunt and get food ready to travel. I had hoped that she could guide me better than a general direction.

“Well you complicate things. I am leaving here in a couple of days. I will have to check in on you being who you claim to be.”

Kasidy looked over at me from the ground. “I understand; the god of the Bards sent me to you, so you must be important to him and have a way to communicate with him. If I need to leave your home and wait someplace else, please let me know, and I will go.

I was about to tell her to leave when Blink walked over to Kasidy and laid down next to her. Kasidy froze up for a moment, and then Blink put her head in her lap and started to purr. That traitor.

* * *