I sat my butt back down and started working on the arrows I had. If I needed to take out an enemy that outnumbered me and I couldn’t run from, then I needed enough ammo. As I worked, I waited for Lannah to finish her spell.

I could almost feel the power rolling off of her. Or I could feel the weather change at that point; I was sure which it was. I was used to my spell for Sam, where I cast it, yelled a question, and passed out.

Whatever she was doing took much longer. She had been at it for well over two hours by this point. I could see that she was crying, but since I didn’t know what was going on, I didn’t know how I could help. I didn’t even know if I could help.

I had eight arrows to work with. What I needed was around 500 arrows. I figured at the range I would be shooting, it would kind of be me praying for a hit. That was okay, though, since I could practice some. As my level would go up, so would my ability to hit.

I started in with the tips of the arrows. Each one had just a bit of iron and so took mana better than the river stones did. So I was able to put a whole point of mana into the arrowhead.

As my imbuing skill had been rising, the amount of lost mana went down along with the speed at which I could imbue. Where in the past, I would have taken 4 hours to put one mana into a rock, I only took 10 minutes into each arrow. As I worked, I ended up breaking three of the arrows. Something was off about the three that broke. They just couldn’t take that amount of power.

I added a linking rune from each arrow to the quiver I had captured and bound them to each other. With the linking rune in place, I added to it the rune for more. So, I then imbued a river stone and sewed it into the bottom of the quiver. I put a piece of wood on top of it to not mess up the arrowheads when dropped in. My hope was that the quiver would either make a new arrow or call the old ones back. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen.

I wanted to do something fun like the fire, rain, or rot strike on each. The problem was the arrows just wouldn’t handle that type of magic. I could feel my skills telling me not to try to put those runes on these arrows. I might could get a fire arrow if I wasn’t trying to link it to a quiver but not with the link I had in place.

I put a spot for a core on the tail end of each arrow and then a hole in the quiver. The cores are an odd piece of magic. They can be seen, and on most of the items that I have put a core in, they can be felt. However, they weren’t that way on all of them.

If this was going to work, then I needed cores, and I would need them fast. It meant that once Lannah came around, I was going to see if she could dump her mana into the necklace. If she could, then I might could take out some of them from here.

The whole time I had been working, I would take breaks and head back to watch what the goblins were doing. It was as I finished up putting runes on the arrows that I saw the goblins had begun to set up fires. The ones who had left were bringing back wood to burn.

The whole time I had been trapped on my ledge, I hadn’t seen Blink. So now I didn’t know if that was because she was asleep in some tree again. Or if that was because she was out stalking food or goblins.

The odd thing about my connection with her was it wasn’t always there or as strong as at other times. I was sure that I would know if she died. I had checked her status screen a few times and didn’t see anything wrong.

I couldn’t wait on her to make a move, and I couldn’t go looking for her. If she was out there, then she would have to watch out for herself. I just wished she was here because I was willing to bet that she could take out the mages for me.

While my attack on the goblins had hurt their numbers some, they seemed to be back up to over 50. With what my dreams had shown me, if they could get to me, they would just swarm and overrun me. I would be lucky to kill a few.

With that in mind, I was planning on having a last stand if I needed to in my storage room. It would limit how they could attack and should let me take them. I also was going to trap the fool out of my landing.

Depending on how long they kept me trapped up here, I might make this place cost them dearly. In fact, I was hoping to. I didn’t want to run from this fight and climb out because Lannah couldn’t get away. I didn’t want to lose someone else to these monsters; I had already lost enough.

I stopped in my thoughts on that. I hadn’t lost anyone to the goblins. My dreams had lost people, but I hadn’t. Just like I hadn’t made any zombies. I hadn’t lost anyone. I also wasn’t going to lose anyone.

When I got back, I saw that Lannah had moved to the chair and was fixing food. “So, did you get your message through?”

Lannah jumped a little at my voice. “Yes, I did. He confirmed what I thought, it would be several days at best before he could get me to safety. He asked if we could hold out and I told him that I didn’t know if we could but that we would try.”

“So he has a way to find you?”

“Yup, he can trace me magically for a few hours each day. I just have to be in contact with him so that he can find me. It is a spell that he has mage he pays run.”

“What’s the soonest he can find us?”

“He told me to hold out for three maybe four days and I should be rescued.”

“I think that might be something we can do. To help I need to see if you can imbue my necklace.”

Lannah said, “thats not a skill I have so I am not sure I can.”

“Just give it a try and we will see what happens. By the way how much mana do you have?”

“Not much.”

Soon we were eating. While I could cook food, that was okay; she knew how to cook much better than I did. I couldn’t even say that it was an ingredient thing. Nope, she cooked the same meal as I could have just did it better. Did it so much better that I got a pop-up.

Well prepared meal.

Mana and Heal regeneration +5%

4 hours

“You can cook well enough to give boosts?”

“Kind of, you have to have a high enough level in cooking and an active skill.”

“So you have some kind of cooking class?”

Lannah started to laugh. Not that I-am-about-to-sob laugh like last time. No, this was the type that starts with a giggle of he-is-so-dumb-it’s-cute and moves into a full blown throw-your-head-back-and-laugh. She had a great big smile on her face.

“No, I don’t have a cooking class, though there are some of those out there. I have an active skill that I picked up in an open slot called power of the hearth. If this wasn’t your home but mine or a neutral spot than I could make the fire provide a better nights rest and give the calm buff. As it is I can cook a meal as an invited guest and give you a sample of my hearth.”

“So what are your classes?”

“I am a merchants daughter and my secondary class is hostess. Either one of those can change with a life event which can just be leveling the class far enough. I likely will never get rid of hostess as it will always help with business to have those skills. There have been many deals made because my mother has a high enough hostess skill to get the right people to come to dinner. Merchant’s daughter, well, that will change when I get married.”

“Do you lose the active skills when you change classes?”

“Kind of, you can keep them or merge them with others of your new class. If you keep them then you can’t get new ones, if you merge them then they change some what.”

“When I moved from daughter to merchants daughter my active skill of defuse because negotiation. I went from being able to get out of trouble with a smile to being able to smile and talk my way out of a problem.”

“Wow”

“They are all common so while they might be special to you they aren’t much to anyone else.”

I finished up my food and cleaned up the area the best I could. “Okay so here is what I want you to do. Try to push your mana into the necklace. It should let you because it likes power.”

Lannah took the necklace from me and started to try to push her mana into it.