I got to the ledge by about three. The days were much shorter now that we were moving quickly into fall. Either I could press on from the bush and make it back to the waterfall at night or camp out at the ledge. It would be a short day if I stopped over at the shelf or a long one if I pressed on.

“Sweetie, should we just push on to the waterfall tonight or stop now?” I asked Blink.

“Homes”

“Okay, lets get back and then go visit Dave for a meal.”

I had been thinking about the storm all morning. It was odd and it kind of worried me how strange it was. The way the whole field I was in was wrecked just felt off. I had seen storms that did massive amounts of damage quickly. However, I had never seen one that dumped everything in a few hundred yards on one spot. If I didn’t have a second way out, I wouldn’t have been able to get out of that mess.

I knew I was going back to the waterfall to make the Sisters happy and get their help finding Lannah, but I wasn’t sure if they would answer the question that I was tumbling around in my brain. Did I somehow piss off another god? If I did, it only seemed fitting that I tried to appease them because I would hate to get caught in that type of storm.

Dave didn’t seem like he would be one that could answer that question, and neither did the Shamans. While the Sisters were goddesses, they appeared not to be with the current pantheon, and Sam seemed to know what was going on. He might not be a god, but it seemed like he was dating one of them.

So I did the only thing that I could think of doing. I stopped on the path and looked around to make sure there weren’t any sharp stones. Then I checked to see if there was a storm or lightning god that an ordinary person in this world would know if they offended.

Oh great and mighty greeter Sam, I the lowly Arn beseech you to answer my question. Last night a massive storm centered on me, and all of the trees were dumped where I was sleeping. Is there a god who I offended somehow that I need to appease?

I truly hated sending Sam questions. The dream was bad enough, but the fact that I always passed out from mana overuse and that I tended to hit my head on something no matter how far around me I cleared just seemed to be the icing on the cake.

While I thought that I was likely safe where I was going, I still made sure to keep my standard out and ready. It wouldn’t do to have made it so close only to end up dead because I got lax. So we pressed on with the best speed that I could make with a pack full of rocks.

When we got past the slope down to the river where I ran from the dogs, Blink started to roam a bit, looking for food. We were both feeling happy about being close to home. She had grown quite a bit on this trip kind of meant that she was always hungry. The fun part for me was that when I left home, I had a dog-sized lizard who rode on my kayak. However, I now had a much larger bonded. I knew she could swim, but I wasn’t sure if she would want to swim that far or if she would take one of her other forms to ride back.

When the sun had just started to set, my standard flared to life as a blue light flashed from behind me. I turned to see a large group of orcs behind me. Well, it appeared to be a full war party, as there were gremlins, goblins, and a few orcs. The caster appeared to be one of the orcs, and the goblins were now throwing spears at me while the gremlins charged.

I was close to home, but I had never seen them on this side. It didn’t mean that they couldn’t be here, just that they hadn’t. The last time that I had fought this many, I ended up needing the help of the goddesses to beat them. While the little guys were far more manageable than the skeletons, the orcs were scary.

I scanned around to find a good place to fight. Taking a group like this, I would have loved to have been in a more controlled area. However, that wasn’t here; I was in a sparse wood with underbrush. The only stop that looked halfway decent to fight was the tree a few yards away. It would keep some of their distance attacks from hitting.

After a quick sprint to the tree, I planted my standard and dropped my pack. I took a step toward the orcs, unhooked my totem, dropped it to the ground and backed to the side of the totem, and pulled my bow. I hadn’t gotten much use of the short bow in a while, and I was ready to see how it worked now.

The gremlins rushed at me when I stopped moving and were the first to die from the totem. I had been able to raise it to level three on the trip, so I didn’t just get hot smoke out of it but scorching smoke that was also toxic to breathe. I had thought that would have turned into fire by now, but that just wasn’t happening, and I hadn’t thought that it would pick up a poison aspect, but it did. Which made the gremlins die quickly.

The goblins that were the gremlin handlers were slightly brighter but not much as they tried to circle around before attacking. This just meant that they weren’t as bunched up as they started to die. Some of them had been further away and so threw their spears at me, which of course, bounced off the Stone Air and then fell to the ground. They then either had to move in close to attack or move in close to get their spear. Either way, they moved into the killing zone of the totem.

The caster and the other orcs were the problems. I figured that Blink would drop the caster shortly, but I needed to do my part. Two of the orcs were using sizable bows to shoot arrows that appeared to be enchanted or spelled or something. Each one that hit created a crackling blue or red spot to show on the dome. The caster, when his ball of magic hit, would create a large area that distorted my view out of about half of my dome. Each time I saw a significant decrease in power.

The fourth orc was just standing there with a wicked-looking hammer in his hands. This wasn’t a real usable hammer like mine. Nope, that hammer was a full-on fantasy hammer with a head the size of my chest. I had no idea how he was going to use it. He had walked right up to the edge of the totem range and just looked at me with an evil hungry, toothy grin.

The fifth wasn’t as domineering but looked just as ruthless as he moved around the dome, never in range. He had a scar down his right eye and carried a sword and a shield. His movements made me think that he was more of a killer than the other. He was cold in the way he observed me. Of the two, I thought he would be the hard one to defeat.

I took aim and shot the hammer orc with my short bow, and while the arrow hit him, he just laughed at me. I saw the glow of blue ice damage start, and then it just stopped. While I thought I might could overcome him with time and enough arrows, I only had six total, and those would be better used against the caster.

I adjusted to the front of my dome and shot right at the caster. As the arrow passed the orc with the hammer, he moved the head of the hammer up to block my arrow and let out a huge laugh. At that moment, I felt like it was time to kill him. He absorbed one arrow and blocked one. I was in a rage at this orc like nothing I had felt before. I fired all four of my arrows at his laughing face. I then dropped my bow and started to advance on him at a run. I bounced off my shield as I could not pass through it and landed on the ground.

I shook my head and started to rise to see the orc laughing at me. I didn’t feel the rage that I had before and realized that he had done something to force me to attack him. I had wasted all of my arrows. The jerk had taunted me, and even with my increased mental defenses, he was able to draw me. I was still low, and he was laughing when I fired off a stone sphere at him.

I was the one laughing as I got to my feet. I had caught his left leg square on and snapped it. He fell to the ground flopping around with an extra knee where his shin was. It reminded me of a kickboxer who fractured his leg as he went down. I stepped back and yanked my standard out of the ground. I didn’t have much time left, but I could finish this one.

I sprinted forward till the hammer orc that I was now thinking of as Gimpy was inside the dome. Then I planted the standard and moved in for the kill. What I wasn’t expecting to see, however, was him toss back a health potion and stand up swinging. The giant hammer caught me just above the pelvis and sent me to the top of the dome.

The dome didn’t let me pass through, so when I hit, it was like doing a back flop onto the ground. All the air was shocked out of me, and then I found the ground from a ten-foot fall. What little air I had was forced out with the belly flop. I wasn’t breathing as my debuffs told me my diaphragm was dazed. I also saw that I was racing toward being unconscious. I was fighting for a breath when my head got kicked, and I went flying back.

I felt my back hit my standard and knock it over, which dropped the dome, and I rolled like a log across the ground. I still couldn’t breathe, and now I was seeing spots from being kicked in the head. My right eye was bleeding when my weighted skirt kicked in, and all my debuffs were healed.

I yanked in a ragged breath and stood up in time to see the oversized hammer coming right at me. I raised my left arm and moved to the right, angling the shield to take the hit and hopefully dump it to the side. With my right hand, I punched toward his left side and fired my ring again.

My left arm slammed into my head, and my wrist felt like it was just sprained or broken from the impact on my head. My right leg collapsed a little, and I tilted forward into a poorly executed left shoulder roll. As I was heading to the ground, I saw blue light pass where I had just been, and the orc screamed.

My stone sphere had hit with enough force to make him twist to his left, which brought his face around just in time to catch a ball of whatever it was that the caster was throwing around. When I came up, I saw that Hammer-Guy was grabbing his face with both hands as his skin was sloughing off. I drew my sword and slid in quick with the tip of it right between his arms.

As I turned toward the mage, Blink made her appearance in the battle. Like any good rouge, she showed up on the back line to take out the squishy ones first. She had launched herself from a tree, and when she hit, she ripped the throat out of the caster before anyone knew what she was doing. Her tail then lashed out and broke the bow of one of the archers before she ran back into the forest.

The archer that had lost his bow pulled a dagger out and ran towards the trees. The other one turned from me and started to scan the trees. He had his own fight to deal with. The ranged guys were out of the battle for a while; I just wasn’t sure how long.

The sword and board orc reminded me that he was around and that my dome was down when I felt his sword slide through the back of my right knee. While I had armor, my joints were still mostly unprotected, and this guy was good enough to make use of it. I fell as he yanked his blade sideways and out. I noticed the debuffs show up right before I felt his shield across my head.

The orc walked around so that I could see him. He had a big grin on his face like he had just won the lottery and was going to be celebrating for a long time. He squatted down and looked into my eyes. Then he stood up, took a step back, and raised his sword.

If it wasn’t for magic, I would have been completely done for. My skirt fired off a second time, and was able to partially heal my leg and remove the brain damage. I was still on the ground, and my sword wasn’t nearby. I fired my third stone sphere and caught my would-be executioner square in the face.

A bowling ball at twenty miles per hour to the face was all it took to send the orc back. However, unlike a human being hit, he didn’t fall. He caught himself with his back leg and came back up. His face was a mess. The orc had just been grinning at me, but now he was yelling, and all of his teeth were broken or missing. He was pissed, and I was why.

I scrambled to my feet, grabbing my standard on the way up. As soon as I laid my hand on it, I triggered it catching the Sword dude on the other side. I planted the standard back into the ground as he started to slash at my dome. Happily, I was still in range of my totem, which had taken to pouring hot smoke at the orc I was fighting.

I was down to a third of my health, and he was at half of his, but I still had two uses of my ring, so I fired both of them off at short range. I had thought that I made him angry enough that he would tank the hit, but he snapped his shield up and redirected the first one. My second one caught him high on his left shoulder and spun him back around.

I glanced over to where Blink should be and saw her come out of stealth by ripping the Achilles tendon out of the right leg of the archer with a bow and then pounced on the bowless one. She was straight-up mauling him, nothing delicate like ripping a throat out, just claws all over him, causing general damage as he was trying to get his knife at her.

The berserking orc was now hacking out a lung because of the smoke as he kept bashing my shield down. I had about five seconds to go before my shield would drop for good. So planted my sword into the ground and downed both the mana potion and the health potion. Then, as my dome fell, I yanked out my wand of sparks and lit him up.

I thought that should have ended him, but his health didn’t drop at all as he charged right through the flames. As he came at me, my eyes went wide just before he activated a shield bash. I got hit right on the wand, and my outstretched hand shattering the bones in my right hand sent me into the air and flying. My health dropped from full to 1/8th as I hit the ground.

* * *