I had worked 6 days in the safe room and headed out of it at the end of the sixth. I was ready to sleep and hated that I was going to. I had asked Sam a question before going in, and now it was time to find out what he had to say about claiming land. It wasn’t that I needed to know, only that I wanted to make sure that Kasidy or someone else couldn’t take my home from me somehow. Even if I was planning on leaving.

That night Sam took me into his office once again. While it was never a fun experience and always left me feeling tired the next day, the information that I got from him when I asked the questions the right way tended to help. Of late, Sam had been more helpful than not. I thought that it was because we were slowly gaining the same set of enemies. Not that I wanted anyone that Sam would think of as an enemy mad at me, but it seemed to have happened that way.

Why he still forced me to be still for four hours in the most horrid places, I didn’t know. For some reason, I thought it was related to the spell, but I likely would never understand. Perhaps someday I might risk the question of why he does this, but until I was sure he wasn’t doing this to me because he thought it was fun, I wasn’t going to risk losing the question over it.

Tonight he had me watching him work again. He was wearing, once again, outlandish clothing. His shirt was a bright peach with frilled cuffs and a neckline that laced up with frills there as well. He had on a vest that was orange with gold buttons, which he wore open, and for his hat, he was back to a large black floppy hat with a single feather in it. The feather, this time, was one of the brightest rainbows of colors I had ever seen. He was doing his whole fill-out-a-page staple and sending it off someplace, only for the staple to bounce back through a few moments later.

While I liked seeing that he was a jerk to people other than me, I would have also liked to see him answer my question faster. I wanted to know how to claim the land as I felt like it was something that I needed to do.

When Sam spoke, we disappeared from his office. “Arn, to claim land, you have to have a legitimate claim to the location that you want to claim.” We were looking at my home now, it was night, and everything was quiet except for the water coming down the cliff. Sam kept talking to me, “this can be from being given the land from the current claimant or by conquest. You can also claim unclaimed land by building a permanent structure on it or improving it for more than one season of growth. Depending on the type of the structure and the level of the structure will determine the amount of land you can claim. As your title goes up, so does the amount you can claim. Your title is also tied to how much you have claimed unless you’re granted the title. If you then bring other people in to live on your land, and they view you as the leader, then you can also expand how much land you can claim.”

Sam then quickly had a view of every room I had put in a flash before my eyes. “You can claim to some extent everything that you built as your own. There are problems with doing that.” He paused us, looking at my southernmost room. “If your land you want to claim has enemies in it, then you can’t claim it. Also, once you claim a land, then others can check to see if the land is claimed. This tends not to be a problem. If you try to claim land then everyone inside that area will be told that it is being claimed and then they have a chance to put in a counter claim or declare they are your enemy. Counter claims are based off of who has the more legitimate claim. The higher rated building, the better title, the longer amount of time on the land. These all go into processing who gets to claim the land.”

We returned to Sam’s office. “Now if you claim land then you must keep working it and improving it or your claim will slip. That makes it harder for you to keep the claim against others. War is often fought through proxy of people claiming land and pushing the boundaries of one nation back. When someone goes to try to claim over the top of land that is claimed then the one who is the current owner is notified and is able to take action.”

With that, Sam sent me out of his office. While I expected to wake up after being kicked out, I didn’t. I went flying into the river near my yurt. I started to float down the lake towards the spillway. As I floated, I got cold, freezing cold. I could feel the wet sinking into me, forcing its way into my core. As I floated, I started to hear the tick from Sam’s clock again.

The jerk hadn’t had me watch him for the entire four hours he usually did. Now he had me in water. At least this time, things were changing. As I floated, I hit on the spillway. I thought because my feet were under me, I wouldn’t go over. However, this wasn’t real. This was Sam being Sam, and so over the spillway, I went and down the river. I hit every stone as I bounced my way down. It wasn’t long before I found that I was going far faster than I usually did. I bounced and fell at, at least twenty times the speed the river would have normally taken me. In the two hours I had left in Sam’s clutches, I moved down the whole of the river that I had explored.

As I got close to the end of where I had been, I thought the water would have been warmer and the river smoother; however, I started to sink. I was glad this wasn’t real because I felt the water run into my mouth as I began to drown. The light from the moons started to fade as I went lower and lower.

I woke up coughing and grabbing my chest. I set up and clutched the edges of my bed, glad to be holding something solid and that I wasn’t in water. I knew it was all a dream, but I checked myself for bruises.

After about ten minutes of dealing mentally with the dream, I stood up.

“Sam did it again, answered my question without answering,” I muttered. “He told me everything around how to claim but never how to claim. I’m going to either have to ask him again or see if I can get Kasidy to tell me without showing that I know nothing.”

Then I smiled, “I can also see if Dave or the Old men know how to claim something. I bet Dave can’t tell me because it has nothing to do with the dungeon. But the Old men likely know because I bet the Wild Humans would claim the caves they lived in.”

I sighed and stretched, then walked out of my yurt. I had a lot to do on my list for the day to start with, and claiming the land wasn’t something that was high on the list. It was something that I wanted to know more about but not something that I thought overly mattered right now. It hadn’t mattered before, and I just now learned about it, so there was likely little that it would do for me.

I got started with my typical day and realized while I was fixing breakfast that Blink wasn’t around. I knew that if she wanted to, she could get down from the top, but I also knew that sometimes Blink didn’t want to so that she could make a point about something. I could also make the point to her that I wasn’t going to cave and go back to that lady that was in my home. I had things to do like training and hunting and my life. If Kasidy could teach me to read or if she knew how to get to other people, then I would go up and try to make nice with her. However, as it stood, she seemed to be worthless to me, and that still made me mad.

She was sent to help me not to be a drain on resources, but I wasn’t sure what all I could do about this. I guess it was possible that I was looking at things from the wrong angle, but I didn’t know what the right one would be. The things I needed she seemed not to bring, so I wasn’t sure why she was sent. I would have been better off with just the beer.

I spent my morning like I usually would before heading to the top. I hadn’t checked yesterday to make sure that I was secure up top, nor had I set any of my traps. Kasidy had kind of derailed everything that I was doing, and so now I needed to get back into the game. I still wanted to check from the Thicket to see if there were any signs of the orcs, but I also didn’t want to deal with that lady. She was confusing. One moment all angry, and the next, she was being nice. Then again, it tended to be that way with most women I knew.

“Even Blink is getting that way...”

* * *