It was still before dawn when I woke up. The first thing I did was walk over to the river and try to scrub myself clean. I wanted to wash away the emotions that I had from the dream. I was starting to hate my sleep.

If it wasn’t Sam’s office, then it was a memory of the Wild Human. I am more convinced now that I hadn’t somehow taken over this guy’s body. He had too many years of memories, and I had none of the scars that I showed him picking up.

The good part, at least, was I woke up this time before getting the feelings of those laid to rest in the ritual form of the spell. It was good that using it to lay to rest the unnts didn’t pull any memories. I would hate to remember myself killing myself. It would be so messed up in so many ways.

As I came back from the river, I started to think about what I saw. The goblins captured the women and took them back for a big feast of some sort. It wasn’t just that they were eating the people. It was that they were torturing the women.

I could almost forgive them for eating people. Lions, tigers, and bears eat people sometimes, but they are just animals. If that was what the goblins were doing, then it could be reasoned that they saw us as any other animal.

But that wasn’t what was happening. They were hurting the women by making them watch. They wouldn’t take the dead from a battle, but they wanted the living. There was nothing that I was seeing that was redeemable from this race.

Something else stuck out to me, though. There was something in my dream about those who worshiped the dark gods. It made it seem like this was less a political war and more a religious war. Perhaps it was political for the gods involved but for the people, it was a religious war.

I got back to my fire and looked over at the furs. Lannah was still asleep. It was likely a good thing. With what I saw last night, there was a good chance that she had seen others cooked even before I got there.

While I could now say that I understood what that would be like, it was once again like a memory that was old and not a trauma that just happened.

I changed into my armor and grabbed my staff. I needed to head downriver a ways. It was important to scout out at least to the ascent. If I had a warning, then we might be able to hunker down and wait out their attack.

It only took me a few minutes to get down the cliffs. Last night was a mess; that girl was too sensitive. I understood it, though. She had been through a lot and so was trying to defend that last bit of what she could.

Once we got going, I was hoping that she would get better. I would push us each day until she was tired, and then we would stop for the night. It wasn’t the best idea because if she was exhausted, then it would make running in an emergency harder. However, being exhausted might be what she needed not to dwell on the goblins until I could get her back home.

In the morning light, it was much easier to see my path. So, I took my time to inspect my traps on the way out. They seemed like they were still holding up and would be ready if they were needed.

When I got down to the ascent, I looked around. I was trying to stay hidden as I watched for any signs of us being tracked. While I didn’t see signs of us being followed, I did find our tracks.

I hadn’t done a good enough job at brushing things out. So I took the time to slowly head up to the ridge path, covering our tracks as best I could. There weren’t many, but there were enough that my level 6 tracking was able to pick them up.

I took about an hour to make sure that everything back to the last stone area was brushed out on the ridge. While I had been planning on being there when Lannah woke up, I figured that this was more important.

As I traveled back, I made a second pass looking for anything I missed. It was slow, but the morning was still early since my dream woke me up just before dawn.

I felt Blink start to stir over our bond. It was odd how quickly combat had made our bond grow. For the longest, we had just kind of been there without the emotions. Now, we could both send emotions to the other.

I sent her the feeling that I was okay and returning. She sent me the feeling that I was dumb and she was hungry. A few moments later, I felt her smug emotions of eating something fresh.

As I passed for the second time that day where the geson had shown up, I saw another one. It was less than I wanted more food since we had enough to travel for a while and more that I knew the thing would attack if I didn’t first.

I figured now was as good as time as any to try to use runes in combat, so I pulled out a weaken and an animal. My intent was to make the geson weaker before I attacked.

The runes in my hand began to glow as the power was released from them, and I aimed at the geson. Soon, I saw a rippling of the air from my hand towards the pint-sized evil carnivorous goat.

The geson snapped his head up and scanned around himself. His black and red eyes darted back and forth as he stamped its front legs. Finally, he started to snort and shake his head back and forth. Then he looked at me.

I thought that I was hidden well enough as I was barely able to see him through the branches. However, it seemed that my hiding skills were not at the same level as this guy’s finding abilities.

He lowered his head and charged right at me.

As I had already been found out, I stood and quickly spun my staff, charging the firestrike to its fullest.

Timing in a fight is what tends to matter most. You can have a great plan, and if your timing is off, then it all falls apart.

This whole thing felt like the time that I started a fight in middle school by jumping off the pull-up bars onto another kid. I thought I would be able to take him with my sudden attack. However, I missed and ended up getting beaten up yet again. This was much like that.

I whiffed my swing, and the weakened geson managed to not miss his charge. The good thing was his little horn of death found my misnamed wooden greave of Ironwood. This, in turn, showed if you are going to run your head into something, you should know what you are hitting.

His horn was good and truly stuck in my armor. Which gave me enough time to not miss with my staff this time. The sad thing is the mana was already gone with the strike that missed, and the angle that I was hitting it sucked. So all I managed to do was dislodge him.

He pulled an epic warhorse move and reared back with both front hooves. Then he slammed as he was slamming them down; I fired out a front kick right under his head.

You have survived to the end of combat with a foe that out ranks you

You have taken no damage.

A question that I wanted to be answered was why this message didn’t always show up. I didn’t want it answered enough to ask Sam, but Lannah should be able to help me out. In fact, it seemed like I might not need to ever speak to Sam again.

I grabbed up the geson in a much better mood than I had been in and headed back home. Fresh meat, no sign of goblins, and the prospect of never asking Sam another question all made me much happier.

I had been gone for around three hours when I got back. I saw that the dress was still on the back of the chair, and I saw no sign that Lannah had gotten up.

I moved quietly towards the lean-to; if she was still asleep, I would let her stay that way. No telling the last time she got to sleep. As I approached, I looked under my lean-to.

She was still lying where I had put her down. One of her arms and legs was poking out from under the fur. I watched her long enough to make sure I saw the gentle rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.

I had been worried for a few moments that she had died on me. Since she was okay, I turned to the current project. So, I dropped down near the geson and started to process it.

This would go much faster now that I beat the goblins a few days before and had real knives. I would be dropping all my stone weapons and moving over to the metal ones.

I got food going. I knew that having something hot would be good for her. If I had found oats, then that would have been good, but alas, all I had was fresh meat and potatoes for breakfast.

It wasn’t long before I heard Lannah stirring. I had my back to her as I knew what she had on. More what she didn’t have on. I figured that she would be unhappy if I was looking at her when she figured it out. What could be worse is that one of her legs was sticking out from under the cover as I walked up.

Lannah almost whispered, “Arn, where’s my dress?”

I pointed with my right hand to her dress. I had it on the back of my chair, which was right next to me. I was trying hard not to smile because if I smiled, I would laugh.

I understood modesty to an extent, but that extent went out the door in life and death. Nurse and doctors saw people all the time. Firefighters, I am sure, pulled naked people out of houses.

Now, at this moment, we weren’t in life and death, but no one ever accused me of not being a jerk. I found it great humor to answer questions as asked and not give people what they implied if I thought I could get a laugh out of it.

Ironically, it is that very nature that Sam seemed to show me that made me hate him. I would never stick someone in a fire or let spiders run over them. But, the way he answered my questions was the way that I would as well.

“Give me my dress.”

“Okay,” I said.

I stood up and turned around and brought it the two steps to her and held it out. While I was a jerk, I also tended to do what people needed. It was an odd thing about me. I never truly understood why I would be the way I was. I like the letter of what was asked or said.

She grabbed the dress from me as I turned back around and went to finish with breakfast. Blink was already moving around, ready for the day.

Just a few moments later, Lannah was next to me. She turned her back to me and, with one hand, raised up her hair to get it out of my way.

“Tie my back for me,” she said.

I stood up and started to pull the laces tight. It wasn’t super tight but just enough to tie. When I tied her dress, I noticed that she had a tattoo of a sun on the base of her neck and a moon on each wrist.

“So Lannah, can you tell me which direction to get back to your town?”

“No, I wish I could. They moved us day and night for several days. We only slept for a few moments before another group would take us. Some times we were in wagons and other we just walked.”

“Do you know the direction you traveled?”

“I think it was north but I am not sure. At night I never knew where we were going, and like I said I have never been much about the wilderness.”

“Okay so if they took you north we should head south. The only problem with that is we went north from their camp.”

I pulled our food from the rocket stove. It was nice having a frying pan now. I could make a much better meal with it. While it sucked that I got slapped in the face a few times, it was nice to have something that would heat more evenly.

As I was serving out breakfast, the question that I was hoping wouldn’t be asked was…