The skills that I had that were directly relevant to healing Lannah were Herbalism 14 and Ritualistic healing 10. On a tangent, I had my Ritualistic spell casting at 13 and primitive runes of a 12; both of those had uses but still were not direct.

I was no cleric, or paladin, with healing nor even a wizard with healing tricks. No, I was just a Shaman, which only gave me a few ways of dealing with this. So I started by brewing more tea.

I could cobble together something with runes if I needed to. The problem with the runes was that they were one-time uses, and then I would need to remake them. The leather skirt could heal wounds, but I was trying to figure out how to cancel out debuffs.

I still wasn’t high enough of a level in Ritualistic healing to get a healing spell. Even then, it might not be something that would clear out the debuffs. I wasn’t even sure if anything could fix her issues since they were all long-term issues.

Hell, the long-term issues might not get fixed. The goblins had already found us, and so there was no telling if they would be back any time soon. I was worried that I killed myself by rescuing this girl. Girl was the wrong word to use as she was every part a woman. But, it still didn’t change the real issue at hand.

I had goblins show up at my front door, and I had no real back door. So the best I could do was to climb straight up. I knew that I could make it if I needed to, but I wasn’t so sure about Lannah. Even if she was fully healed, I knew nothing about her skills.

That was a big part of the problem. I knew what I was. But unfortunately, I was next to nothing. I had been working on my skill levels, but I still couldn’t get my real level to go up. So that meant I was still too weak to fight like the wild human in my dream did. I didn’t have any active skills, and my health was right about the same level as a goblin’s.

When the tea was ready, I poured her a cup which I sweetened with honey. I had been happy to have found the beehive and found them to be normal bees. Those giant yellow jackets still gave me the shivers.

As the tea started to cool to a drinkable temperature, I started up a soup in the skillet. It was almost sad that I was using a powerful magical weapon as a skillet, but I was doing what I needed to do.

I took the tea over to where Lannah was asleep and reached out to wake her.

“Lannah, you should wake up for a while and eat,” I said in a hushed voice.

The girl rolled over a little, and I could tell I was having problems waking up. So I rocked her shoulder a little bit more.

“Umm, just a bit longer Becka.” She muttered.

“Lannah, It’s Arn, you should wake up. I have tea for you and some soup soon. You need to eat.”

Her eyes snapped open, and she pulled away from me. I could tell she was scared and still very disoriented. She backed up in the bed, and as she did, the sleeping fur fell down around her. Which caused her to freak out again and push herself further into the lean-to.

I held out the cup of healing tea, “This will help you some. I have food cooking as well. Come over and eat it will help you recover.”

She reached out and took the cup as her brain caught up to her body’s reactions. “Thank you, I am already feeling better.”

“Good, I have a soup for you. If you want you can have the chair.”

She sighed slowly, “that sounds great.”

I served up the food. As I was, her majesty queen Blink of the bloody face, showed up. She was grinning as she came up with a large rabbit in her mouth. The odd thing about the rabbit was it had two little nubs that looked like the start of antlers.

Lannah paused in her eating when Blink dropped her prize by the fire. “Wow, a Basher! That couldn’t have been easy to catch.”

Blink chortled as she dug into her post-lunch snack. While I might be eating lunch, I knew that she had at least one of the gremlins, and I had felt her catch something else while we were out there.

I shook my head a bit. I had heard of bashers on Earth. There was an author that I read that wrote about them. I always thought they were kind of like Jackalope but smaller.

“Are bashers like jackalopes?”

“Kind of but bashers like being underground more and tend to hunt in caves. They will have a single alpha that is huge and sometimes armored. Jackalopes tend to like the open because they get tangled up on their antlers and they can build up to great speeds. That one is clearly a basher because the nubs on its head are more reinforced and the legs in the back aren’t as long.”

I felt one of my skills made me agree with her. It seemed like I wanted to nod my head. What I didn’t know was if that was my survival skill triggering or my built-in nod when someone starts telling you things that you are clueless on skill.

I figured that I was erring on the side of caution. “Good to know.”

She looked at me for a moment. “The bad thing is that if the basher wasn’t from a dungeon, then we might have a lair close by.”

“Well that is the first one of them that I have seen. So I am sure it was just one that was out on its own. If there were more then I could see the issue but there are all sorts of odd things around here.”

“No you don’t understand, that one is a young one its nubs have just started to form. Unless your pet dragged that from several miles away then we are about to have dozens of those guys bouncing around someplace close by. They are very aggressive.”

“How do you know so much about these?” I asked.

Blink let out a slow low hiss. I glanced at her just in time to see her tail swipe the cup of tea over and she disappeared. I sighed at Blink's antics but focused back on Lannah.

Lannah, who missed what Blink did, smirked, “my father is a very successful merchant in Essex. We dealt with all the adventurers that came to town. Bashers were part of a lower-level dungeon that showed up a few years ago. We did a good bit of trade in their pelts.”

I thought over what she said as I was finishing my food. If she was right and we were going to have large horned bunnies around here, then that might be a good thing. But then again, she had said something about a dungeon that set off all sorts of gamer bells.

“Lannah, I don’t get it. You’re from a city and your family is wealthy. How did you get captured? Its not like goblins are the type to raid a city.” I asked.

Lannah was looking around the camp while eating. Sometimes staring at things I had built and sometimes looking me over. She was silent and quite clearly thinking. Something was bothering her, but I wasn’t sure what it would be.

She looked over at me as we finished up eating. She took a big breath, and I watched as she schooled her expressions. “I was on my way from Essex to Windrip to meet my betrothed for the first time. It is a two-day trip, and on our second day the caravan I was part of was attacked.”

She looked down at her cup of tea for several moments before continuing. “I had a guard that my father had sent with me and four servants. The guard were all killed in the fight and the five of us were captured.”

Lannah started to cry at that point. I could only make out a few words between the sobs, but I thought she said that the ones that I left behind were her servants.

“Why couldn’t you have saved more of us? I can tell that you are out here by yourself which means that you should be powerful enough to fight them all. My guards only lost because of the humans that were fighting beside the goblins. If it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t be here.”

“I almost died getting you out and that was against just a few of them. I just barely live each time they fight me. Well except for the last time.”

“I was there for the last time and you looked bad.”

“No the last time you were asleep, but my traps got the big one and the little ones didn’t know what to do. I think it was a scouting party.”

“What!”

“Yeah, just a few hours ago they found the camp. You were asleep and Blink and I took care of them. Mostly, Blink.”

“Why are we still here? If they found us then we need to get moving somewhere else. They might be weak but once they find prey they don’t give up.”

“Well for one, you are still to weak to put much distance between us and them, the other is we killed all their scouts and so should be good for a while longer.”

“I am feeling much better and the limps are both down to slight limps now. I think we could make it to your town.”

“Remember, the lean-to speeds recovery. If you step out from under it, then your debuffs will double until they are gone. It is just the way it works.”

“I have never heard of an area effect like that on something as primitive as this.”

“Well you can try it again if you want.”

With that, Lannah stood up and stepped out of the awning. However, she once again sagged and came back in much slower. “I see your point; my limps both went back to a full limp. So we have to wait until the debuffs are fully gone before moving.”

“Right. Now the other problem is I don’t know where a town is. I might even be more lost then you are right now because I know nothing outside this valley.”

“What do you mean, surely you weren’t born here.”

“That is so on point lady. Look, I know this is going to sound weird but since there is magic here and the like, it might not sound too weird….” I took a deep breath and looked Lannah in the eyes, “I am not from this planet, I got brought here and dumped in the woods not two days walk down river. Just, not on the side with the goblins. I have no idea how I got here or even where here is.”

I was watching her as I spoke to see what type of reaction I would get from her. However, she just kept staring at me with a blank expression.