Kasidy was waiting at the bottom of the steps when we got back. She had her book out and was just finishing writing something in it. She stood up and smiled. Grabbed her bag and walked over to the thicket entrance.

She asked. “Ready to go?”

“Almost I want to just do a quick double check of the room. I don’t want to leave anything behind.”

I ran up the steps and looked in. While most things had been gathered up, I noticed kind of quickly that her brush and my mug were on the window ledge. I went over and picked them up. She had at least cleaned out the mug, so I placed it in my bag. I took another minute to look around and then paused.

I muttered, “Where’s my sleeping fur?”

I headed back down. “Kasidy! I found your brush. Where’s my sleeping fur?”

She meekly smiled and ducked her head. “I forgot I hung it over by the river. I shook it out some, but it needed some better light to dry.”

I headed over and saw that she had tossed it onto a bush to air out. It felt damp, like she washed it a bit. Not everywhere, just a few places. Then I saw that there was still some of this morning’s soup on it. She had made a mess, tried to clean it, and then forgot what she had done. Why had she been sent to help?

I brushed off the rest of the soup as best as I could. Then I rolled it up and headed back over to Kasidy. She looked really embarrassed about the blanket. I wasn’t even going to ask her if she left her mug and bowl yesterday. I knew the answer. It didn’t drop out when she fell into the river.

I smiled and pointed to the exit. “Blink you scout and cover. Kasidy stay near me and we will be the bait as we travel.”

The trees in this area were some of the most breathtaking that I had ever seen. When I was younger, I took a week to go to North Carolina during peak leafing season. It was beautiful there, the oranges and the reds covering the whole mountain. The thing was, you couldn’t help but see the places people were. The roads that cut through the valleys and the gaps in the trees from the power lines. Here there was none of that.

We hiked through the idyllic countryside. Kasidy, for some reason, was being much more deferential to me and not running her mouth. She was also staying just a few feet away never straying. It was almost as pleasant as my trip downstream with just Blink had been. The biggest problem we were having though was that we were climbing and we were away from the river. It was heading west, and we were moving northeast again.

We had just gotten to a flatter area for a break when Blink came running back. She was moving fast enough that I knew where she was through the fallen leaves, even if I couldn’t see her. I felt excitement rolling off of her as she appeared.

I got blasted with desires for fighting and then an image of a cave and a group of goblins. “Hunts?”

I thought a moment. “How far away?”

Blink pushed into my mind the trip she took. We were only about three hundred yards from the entrance. That meant that we were close enough that there might be scouts out. If this was a whole goblin village in that cave, then we might have some serious problems on our hands.

I turned to Kasidy. “Blink has found a cave with a group of goblins at the entrance. There’s a fire in there from what she could see as well. They are kind of close just that way about three hundred yards away.”

Kasidy nodded. “Are you thinking about fighting them in the cave?”

“Not sure yet. The problem that we have is with how close we are have we already been spotted and will we be able to sneak by if we haven’t.”

Blink swished her tail and thought to me. “Hunts!”

I smiled at Blink. “Scout around us I want to make sure we have been spotted. We are going to hide over there for a while as you check.”

Blink nodded and then vanished. I felt her heading around in a big circle to look. As she left, I pulled Kasidy towards some of the thicker brush in the area. I looked at it and pushed a few branches around enough to make an entrance. My natural shelters skill kicked in, and we pushed into a hollow between the trees.

I placed a finger over my mouth. “We need to stay as quite as we can right now.”

Kasidy looked afraid she was curled up with her back on the tree and her knees brought in close. I pondered the problem. While I might be a level zero, I had equipment that let me fight. She had a level but wasn’t a combat class. She didn’t even have a weapon right now. Which meant that if we got into a fight, she was just a target.

I leaned close to her. “I am going to give you a knife. Don’t forget it like you did your brush. This is magical so I don’t want to have to search for it.”

She nodded to me as I pulled the sheath for the knife of pausing out. I pressed it over to her and she slid it into the belt on her dress. I shook my head slightly. At least she had something to defend herself with now. It had to be a long road for a bard to become a god, with how little power this girl had.

We waited for about thirty minutes before Blink came back. When she did, her mouth was covered in blood, and she was smiling. She sent me images of a few scouts around us that she had killed and then showed me how deep the cave went.

It wasn’t just an overhang. She had slipped past the guards and went in, seeing torches and fires until she came to a big cavern with a large number of goblins all milling around. From her vantage point, she could see lights which, if they were fires like what was close, meant that she could see around half a mile.

I winced. “Looks like we aren’t going in there Blink. With that many I’m sure we would be over whelmed.”

Blink drooped and gave me puppy eyes. The thought was an image of me in a tree house and her in the cave. Then she snapped her mouth shut and slowly blinked at me.

I shook my head. “Blink. There are just too many of them in there for you. If I were to hole up in a thicket while you went to take them out they might still get us. Beside who says there isn’t another way in?”

Kasidy asked. “How many did she see?”

I glanced over at Kasidy. “Thousands.”

She gulped. “How are we going to get by?”

“Well most of them are in that cave so we should be okay. We just need to bypass them some. If we play it safe we should be okay I hope.”

Kasidy nodded. “Goblins are known to have huge underground paths that let them pop up all over the place. There are times that they will tunnel and dig and then show up hundreds of miles past any where they had been seen before.”

I furrowed my eyebrows for a moment. “That doesn’t sound right. From what I have seen of goblins, they don’t work and build. The only time they do anything is if there are orcs pushing them to do it.”

Kasidy just shrugged. “I just know what people in the cities say. That’s why the sewers are patrolled no one wants them to just pop up inside the walls.”

“Well that sounds bigger than we want to deal with. Blink I don’t think we can take that many out but we might can keep them busy for a while.”

Blink cocked her head slightly and sent with almost a pleading. “Hunts?”

I shook my head and smiled. “Kasidy I need you to stay here for a few minutes. We are going to see about making it harder for them to follow us. We will be right back just don’t move.”

Kasidy nodded slowly but had a scared smile. “You shouldn’t split the party.”

“I get that but I need to move quick and if we get into a fight I don’t want you to get hurt. Blink is going to be right back after she leads me to them.”

With that, Blink and I headed off. I was smiling as I pulled out two cube tree stakes. I was going to turn the closest two trees into cube trees, and then I was going to plant a dungeon right at the entrance. With the trees, I figured it would give the dungeon time to grow. Then once the goblins figured out there was a dungeon, I was hoping it would be too late.

We snuck up close, and Blink headed in. There were only a dozen or so goblins milling around the entrance of the cave. It was less that they were guarding and more that they were hanging out. Blink started with the ones on the edge, and by the time they noticed there was a problem, it was only the four next to the fire.

The battle was quick and bloody. Blink seemed to have found a good rhythm of killing. With how weak these goblins were, she was quick to take out their throats and move on. As soon as she was done, I moved forward and tied two large trees to the stakes. Then I headed into the cave and placed the dungeon seed.

I watched the dungeon roll out. It wasn’t going to grow nearly as fast as the last one did, that’s for sure. But it rolled down the cave about a hundred feet then I started to adjust things. As it did, I got the notice asking if I wanted to claim the dungeon. I did. As I claimed the dungeon, I smiled. I knew how I could help get this one on its feet faster.

I pulled up the option for the dungeon to claim things and give it the two wild cores that I had just harvested. Then I spun off a new level zero core and let it claim that one. I watched as the dungeon jumped from level 1 to level three. Then I had it shift its core to hide it deeper in the crack that I had placed it.

I laughed. “Okay Blink let’s go get Kasidy and see how far we can make it today. I don’t think we have to worry about them getting out for a while. At least not from there.”

* * *