When I got into my yurt, I no longer felt the pressure in my chest nor the desire to be here. Yet I didn’t move for a while. I just stood there thinking about what all happened. While I was entirely correct. She was worthless to me and my goals. I likely shouldn’t have said anything.

It was just so infuriating I needed help to read, and I could have used a guide to a town so that I could find Lannah. Sure I had the dot showing me where Lannah was, but I didn’t know the trails there. If I went directly there, I was sure that I would add days, if not weeks, on my trip.

I paced around inside my yurt. I could tell, though, with how rough she looked, that she wasn’t going to be able to take care of herself. Her clothing wasn’t suitable for this environment, and she didn’t appear to have much in the Thicket. She didn’t have gear with her at all, and her dress was just a mess.

“I am going to have to completely outfit her if she was going to stay with me as I traveled. If she wanted to just stay in this place then I would need to see about taking care of her too.”

I sat down on my bed and dropped my face into my hands. I felt a headache coming on. Blink hadn’t helped at all when it came to dealing with the crazy side of the lady. Sure she knocked her down, but then she just stayed quiet. I guess that was good, though, so that the lady didn’t know how smart she was.

I sighed, “The real question was why did Bartholomew send her. She clearly wasn’t here to help me read or get to people and it wasn’t like I needed a barmaid. I could drink happily without someone serving me anything. I couldn’t care less about flowers. She did out level me but that didn’t tell me much.”

I shook my head and went to think. I headed out to the practice yard and got into my training. I had been doing just enough to keep all my buffs active, but I couldn’t ever relax and just be mindless while I was traveling. I needed to let my brain rest. Next, I had to figure out the orc problem. I doubted just from looking at Kasidy that she would be much help if the orcs attacked, and they might even be following her here.

My morning had been shot all to pieces with her being here. It wasn’t something that I was expecting and so messed up my hunting time. I knew that I needed to go and do the hunting for the trip. I needed more if she was coming with me, but if she was staying, that brought up a whole host of other problems.

I moved into my unarmed Kata’s while I was thinking. The most basic of forms I could do without thought. If that crazy lady was from Bartholomew and she was staying here, then I needed to somehow block off more of the upper land so that the orcs wouldn’t find her. Even if she was useless, she was sent here by a god that seemed to be on my side, whatever that meant. So I would need to take care of her some, but she also needed to understand that she needed help and that the Thicket was mine.

I moved over to my wooden target and started to work my strikes. Kicking rope-wrapped wood always helped to sharpen the mind and remove stress. Something about the pain and energy use. I wasn’t trying any of my Ki strikes as I didn’t want to mess my target up.

I stopped and dropped to the ground, panting, “Crap, I really have lost any touch with people. I called the woman worthless just because she couldn’t do what I wanted. That’s not something that is going to sit well with her. There has to be some reason that god thought she could be of use.”

I rolled over and started in on my push-ups. This world is so odd that the work I was doing wouldn’t add strength but only give me a skill that would decrease stamina use. The place bends what should happen all around. Everything seems magical in some ways.

I stopped with push-ups and started a rest walk around my training area.

“Last thing I got to do is figure out what she did to me. Got to be some sort of mind control. As soon as she said to go home I left. I don’t like that at all. Mind magic.”

I stopped walking. I needed to talk with Dave about mind magic and what Kasidy did to me. I can’t let people go about controlling me like that. Then, I needed to ask Sam about how to claim an area and what claiming would do. I didn’t want to ask, but he seemed the best one for this.

I muttered, “perhaps if Dave doesn’t have anything for mind magic the old Shaman’s would. I bet Chaos loves this type of thing.”

I found a spot that was clear of rocks and sticks. I knew that I would fall out because the dumb spell always drained my magic. There were no runes that went with it, so it was one that I could not put on an item. I also hadn’t been able to figure out how to drain mana from something else to power this spell.

Oh great and mighty greeter Sam, I the lowly Arn beseech you to answer my question. How do I claim land and what does it do?

With that, I fell to the ground and took a short, painful nap in the sand.

When I came too, I was even saltier than I had been before I exercised. It wasn’t that I needed the info. It was that I wasn’t sure if I did that messed with me. I was also betting that everything I needed to know was in that dumb world book.

“I got to learn to read.” I mumbled as I dusted myself off.

With all the things that the dungeon could do, bathing wasn’t really one of them. The safe room had water, and I could get a bucket, but there was no bath add-on that I could find. This meant that while it was serviceable for being cleanish, it wasn’t what I wanted after a workout.

So I went to dive in for a swim. It was as I was wading into the water that I was rudely reminded that it wasn’t summer anymore and that the water, which had been refreshingly cool, was now frigid. I came out of my swimming lane almost the moment I hit it, yelping.

“That’s cold! So cold!” I said as I ran right for the fire.

I settled down near the fire to warm up and pulled up the map. From the scale, it looked like Lannah was a good hundred or so miles away. Which almost made sense for the 5 days she thought it took to get here. That said, I was looking at a straight line, so I knew that things might get rough since I could see from the top of the waterfall mountains in the direction that I needed to go.

“I need to get my gear in order before I head out too. Not just that girl. The dungeon can get me better clothing as a base.”

I stood up, dressed, and headed in to talk with Dave. There were things that I needed to do quickly before confronting Kasidy again. First and foremost, I needed something that could counter that spell and perhaps some others.

Just a few minutes later, I was walking into the safe room. “Dave! I got problems and need to buy some things!”

I heard Dave chuckle. “Well good afternoon to you too!” He called from down below.

I hurried down the steps and slid into a barstool. Dave dropped a big tankard of beer right in front of me with a smile, and then he walked over to the equipment rack.

As Dave pulled the rack out, he asked, “So what seems to be the problem, and what are you looking to buy?”

I stood up with my beer and moved down to the rack. “I got hit with what I could only call mind magic and got sent out of my Thicket up above.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Well, there’s this lady up there. Nope not lady, there’s a women up there in my thicket that after telling me she was sent by Bartholomew to help me kicked me out of the thicket.”

Dave chuckled, “Why do you think it was mind magic?”

“She told me to go home and I felt like our argument was over and that I should go back to my yurt. I didn’t stop until I got down there. Just right home without anything else. I had things I wanted to do today but I didn’t care about them.”

“Did it look like she cast a spell?”

“No that was the odd thing, most spells I can see form and come at me. This one didn’t have any of that.”

“Hummm. Did she do anything with her hands before hand? Yup I see it.”

“Right reading the surface thoughts. Had to ask the right questions to see what you needed to see. So what did she do?”

Dave smiled, “She seems to be a form of a bard. Didn’t need an instrument but that taping with her hands worked. Was there any alcohol around you? Ahh your gods blessed beer. That could have amplified her power some.”

“So how do I beat it?”

“Well dealing with bard magic isn’t the same as mind magic. Mind magic you have to build mental defenses, it is how I read your thoughts. You have to work on defending your thoughts all the time and building a mental fort for your brain. There are some things that we might could sell you that could help but they would all be expensive.”

Dave picked up a shot glass and started to clean it while looking at me with a knowing smile. “The problem with bard magic is it is both a ritual spell and cast spell. This means that it carries more weight in what it does than a normal spell and so is more effective but does less.”

I cocked my head to the side, “Fill me in on what you mean. I haven’t seen the ritual magic I do to be any different than other.”

Dave smiled, “What I am talking about is resisting the spell. While ritual magic doesn’t do as much it is harder to resist. So while you have been fighting low level things you won’t notice much change between the two. But if you can ever level than you will find that cast spells do more damage, or healing or effect. However, they are easier to completely resist.”

I nodded, “so bard magic is ritual so it will be harder to stop?”

Dave grinned, “Well if you plan on fighting a bard their magic is very easy to bead. Just fill your ears with wax and the sound can’t get to you. But, if you don’t know it is coming then it is very hard to stop. Made worse if she has a divine connection to the god of bards and has added in faith magic as well.”

I drank the rest of my beer and sat it on the bar. “Fill it up we need to figure this one out.”

“The other thing with bard magic is they have to make music of some sort, whistling, humming, or tapping can all do it. Many of them from what I have been told do low level magic all the time. Things to improve mood, restore energy, or have people tip more. To defeat most of their magic you either need something that messes with hearing a high intelligence.”

“Well that’s not good, my intelligence isn’t high and I am wanting to still be able to hear. Anything that can stop compulsions? I think I can deal with the other things she can do it’s just being forced to do something.”

“For compulsions you need to know you are being compelled and once you do they tend to break apart. So let’s see for 45 gold I have a ring that will cause you slight pain when you are being compelled to do something. The next thing up is 900 gold and the dungeon needs 10 more levels.”

I sighed. “Looks like I have some crafting to do….”

* * *