That night after Kasidy finally let me go to sleep, I was reminded that I had asked Sam a question.

I was back in the office. The clock was ticking, and the fire was crackling. But behind those noises were what sounded like voices calling for help. I couldn’t place it, but they almost sounded like people I knew. Perhaps from dreams, but they sounded afraid. I couldn’t fully hear, and they might not have been people.

I thought I heard Lorie scream, but it might have been a mouse. Then I thought I heard a friend of mine from the orphanage yell to me for help. He had slipped and fell off a concrete wall about a dozen feet onto the sidewalk. I was just too slow to get to him. He broke his neck and never walked again.

Then I thought I heard the crying of Miyuki. Soon after that, I heard the anguished cry of one of the Embers. Then another voice of a lady who I couldn’t reach before the orcs. A moment later, I could have sworn I heard the voice of my best friend, who had given up and turned to drugs asking me where I was.

One voice after another of people I failed. Most of them were from the dreams of Ash. A few of them from Earth and still others I couldn’t place. Men and women were crying out for me to help, and children were accusing me of failing. I even heard Blink and Kasidy asking me where I was.

All while the voices called just under the sound of the fire and clock, my heart tried to race. I wanted to cry with all the memories of those I failed. I couldn’t even place a quarter of the voices, but the ones I could cut me. Yet they weren’t really even voices. They were just sounds and whispers.

After four hours, Sam spoke. “To form a party with Kasidy, you must be within 10 feet of her and looking at her. Then think, “send party invitation to Kasidy.” Then she must accept it for the party to form.”

With that, I was back to being left with voices just outside of complete comprehension. Pleading with me, asking me why I went away or why I didn’t help. Some cried out for me to save them, while others seemed to accuse me of failing them. More and more voices that I didn’t know piled in. They all seemed to be ones I should know, but I just didn’t.

When I woke up, I bolted upright and walked to the window. The dream was by far one of the worst that I ever had. Sure there wasn’t the physical pain of the spider or fire. No, it was the emotional pain of dealing with everyone I let down. Even if many of the voices were from the dreams, they still struck me hard. Of course, I had nothing to do with those people, but that didn’t matter. Even the voices of people that I didn’t know had pilled on to what I was dealing with now.

I sighed. The best thing to deal with feeling emotions like this was to exercise. It wasn’t that it would help me directly deal with the emotion, but rather, it would let my body expel some of the nervous energy from the feelings. So I headed down. I didn’t need to work out today to keep my bonus, so I just pushed myself hard.

I needed the mindless pain of exercise to take me away from the emotions. Soon though, I realized that it wasn’t working. The exercise by itself didn’t force me to focus. So I moved into my katas. It had been a while since I tried to graft a spell into a kata or create a new ritualistic spell.

I wanted to see if I could use my Ki focus to splice in drain mana. The dancing of the shaman magic was already drawing mana from the area. So if I could figure out how to make that draw be connected to something or someone. Then, I might be able to fuel my attacks for a longer amount of time.

I don’t know how long I worked and failed to get anything to take, but I was feeling better enough that I did the next thing I knew I needed to do. Before I went to wake up Kasidy, I needed to ask Sam what all the Party members would be able to see about each other. It was what worried me the most. If Kasidy could see I was level 0, then I couldn’t party with her. But if she couldn’t, then it might help fix some problems we were having.

I cleared out a space around me at the base of the tree house. Then I sat down. Even though it seemed like I never had complete control of the spell, I wanted to keep my fall from hurting too much. So then I activated the spell.

My sitting body went ridged. Then I tried to stand, but with crossed legs, it kept me mostly down. Then, as I went up, my arms shot up above me, and my head tilted back.

Then I yelled. “Oh great and mighty greeter Sam, I the lowly Arn beseech you to answer my question.

What information would Kasidy have access to if I were to follow the steps you gave to form a party with her?”

With that, I passed out. I came to still cross-legged but lying on my front. It was hard to roll over enough to uncross my legs. I had a nice low-level hate of that spell. Sure, I kind of sort of hated Sam. He was getting more helpful, but the pain of seeing him still kind of outweighed the info he gave. The spell, however, was just a pain.

I got up and went up to the tree house. When I came in, I smelled the burning of meat. Kasidy was at the fire trying to use the skillet to heat up some of the salted lambs that we had brought with us. The problem was there wasn’t enough fat to fry it. So I raced over and grabbed the skillet off the fire.

Kasidy yelped and asked. “What?”

I shook my head. “Your using too much heat and not enough fat to fry the meat.”

She dropped her arms and got up. Then she walked over to the table and sat down. I flipped the meat and saw that it was extra crispy on the side that had been down. So even with the plus 4 to the cooking skill Kasidy had managed to mess up the food.

I tossed the burned pieces onto a plate and set the skillet down. It wasn’t going to be the best meal, but there was no reason for us to waste it. So unless I got a debuff for bad food, we would just make do.

As I grabbed a piece, I asked. “You okay?”

Kasidy shook her head. “No I’m not okay. Yesterday was the first time I killed anything and I felt helpless. The day before I almost died because of how worthless I am. I’m not bringing any help to you. I can’t even cook food well enough to not burn the meat. I have seen it done hundreds of times it can’t be that hard.”

I thought for a moment. I wanted to disagree with her about being worthless, but I couldn’t. She kind of was just dead weight at this point. Her songs didn’t do anything for me, and we had yet to find anything that she could help with. I was even the one guiding us. The problem was I knew that people tended to not like it when you agreed about them being worthless.

“Look I understand the trauma of killing. It had to be a scary thing to be attacked like you were and to be able to defend yourself. We are heading to a town I am sure that you will show me that you are helpful once we get there.”

Kasidy nodded a little and then started to nibble on one of the burnt pieces of meat. Unlike me, she kept trying to eat around the burnt meat. Finally, after a few minutes, she sighed and looked at my mug.

She pointed at the mug, “Can I use that?”

“Yeah you can. Let me fill it up with some water for you.”

She took a drink and then looked at the mug again. “I left the other one the first night didn’t I?”

I paused for a moment and lied. “I think you lost it when you fell in.”

“Can you carve me another one? I don’t want us to always be sharing yours.”

I nodded my head. “Yeah I can do that. It will end up taking time. So I will likely work on it at nights. Let’s get going.”

We quickly packed. I saw Kasidy slipping the book into her bag. I had seen her writing in it some, so I knew that she was using it. I just hated that I wasn’t sure what all was in there. Once we were ready, I went and woke up Blink.

Soon Blink was down and scouting for us. As she was going, I was thinking through the problem of Kasidy. She knew that I made things and that I could put cores in them. I also told her that I had a couple of cores from those beasts. Which meant that I might could get her a couple of items. If I could get her a bit better protected, then she wouldn’t be such a dead weight.

I turned to Kasidy. “Once we get far enough away from the goblins I’m not worried about us getting pinned down. We are going to take a slight break and spend a day or so getting you to learn how to shoot the bow. Then you will have something that you can help with.”

Kasidy gave me an odd look and then said. “I don’t think I am strong enough for the bow. That tends to take a lot of strength to use. I might could use a crossbow, but even a short bow might be too much.”

I nodded. “This one is weak enough I am sure that you can use it. If not we will figure something else out. But that is once we give this place the slip.”

A few moments later, Blink pushed into my thoughts. “Safes. No hunts”

I smiled. “Let’s go and remember, stay close.”

Kasidy nodded, and we headed out. I checked my map overlay and noticed that it appeared the dot for Lannah had shifted somewhat closer. I didn’t know why she was moving around, but I could only hope that she might be trying to find me too.

We pushed on pretty quickly. After a couple of hours, the path that we had been following turned west. So we went back into the woods. I was basically trying to go directly to Lannah as the bird flew. It wasn’t going to be the fastest, but without knowing where the roads were, we didn’t have many options.

After another hour, the slight slope up turned into a sheer rock face. We looked down both ways, and as far as we could see, there wasn’t a way up at this point. So, with our backs leaning on the rock wall, we took a break.

I pulled out a handful of nuts and passed them over to Kasidy. “I think we should head east from here and follow this rock face around. I am hoping that it will bring us around so that we can keep going north.”

Kasidy was quickly cracking the nuts. “I can see that since we want to go northeast better than west. That way is west right?”

I smiled. “Mostly. It’s west southwest. This way is almost due east. The only thing that I am worried about is if we encounter something that is impassable.”

A few minutes later, we got up and kept moving. This time with the rock face to our left as we headed east. The ground was kind of hard to move on since it had slopped up to the cliff, but if we went too far down, we would just be in the woods and not be able to see the cliff.

We pushed on till the sun started to go down. Then we headed down into the trees. It had been a good day. We made progress, and we hadn’t been attacked. This was the fourth thicket that I was putting up. Which meant that I needed to get more, so I also needed to create a dungeon.

My plan had been to just create the dungeon right before we left. But I needed more than a quick in and out would get us. If I was going to keep Kasidy safe as we traveled, then I needed her better equipped. Which meant that I would want at least an hour of real-time in the dungeon. I didn’t know how long transport would take to get me back to the main one. But I needed to go back there as well so that I could get more food.

Once the thicket was up, we headed in for dinner. I used the last of the meat and roots for a soup, and we split it. My plan was to wait for her to go to sleep and then create the dungeon. Then if I could get us out before she realized she was in one, that would be better. With how slowly she woke up, it might just work.

What I didn’t count on was that Kasidy was clearly a night owl, and she wanted more stories of when I was a kid.

* * *