The orc was bellowing and still following his charge at me. He had that single-minded determination that berserks were known for. It was great for breaking the line but not so great for noticing things that were important. Blink was on an intercept course with the orc, and as he was coming back for a rage-filled overhand strike, she sliced both his heels at once.

The berserk went down, and she was on top of him, ripping the tendons of his arms. Then she snapped her maw over his throat, ripping it out. She spun on his chest, looking around, and for the first time, I heard her bellow. It wasn’t her hiss growl that I had heard before. It was a low throaty rumble that carried anger and rage. Her tail went back and forth as her eyes scanned around.

I felt sorry for me to come across the bond as she came up and licked my bloody wrist. “Homes! Nows!”

She was right. We needed to move and move quickly. We were only about an hour of limping away from the boat cave on this side of the river. I wasn’t sure if I could get everything or not, but I soon had my pack on and was carrying my standard in my left hand. I used it as a walking stick to lean on as we moved. I hated leaving things behind, but I didn’t have the strength and health to loot.

My right hand was a mess, and I didn’t know how it would heal up. Before I lost my finger, I thought that everything could heal, but now I was worried that my hand wouldn’t fix it. It was the concern that I was still mulling over as we got back to the hidden entrance that I thought I wouldn’t see again.

I felt a wave of relief wash over me. I was safe, at least as safe as I could expect to get, and almost back to a very safe place. If I could make it across the lake, I would have dinner and a good place to sleep. But that wasn’t happening tonight.

Blink had changed back to her little girl form as she came up the stairs from down below. “Daddy, everything looks secure here! Now let me look at your hand and see what we can do to fix it.”

We headed back down the stair she had just come up from and into one of the rooms that I had lit with a magical lamp. It was bright enough that we could easily see what was wrong. I knew from the debuffs that I had 14 broken bones listed in my right hand. The problem was I wasn’t sure how things would heal. I had seen magical healing fix bones, and even some of mine had been fixed.

I was in enough pain that I didn’t understand what was happening until Blink was holding my hand. Then my hand took a light blue glow-like heal minor wound, and 4 of my broken bones went away. She did it twice more until I was down to two. The level of pain I was in had dropped greatly.

Blink looked up at me with her great big eyes, “I get a different spell in each one of my forms and I leveled so I get two now!”

I smiled, “Thank you! I was almost done for on that one. I was getting kind of cocky with how I was fighting. Orcs don’t fight the same way as the undead do. I am just worried about how they got the jump on us.”

Blink nodded, “me too. I didn’t see them or feel them as I passed and there were enough of them that I should have. I don’t know how they cleared past me.”

“Well it is done. I am going to try to rest some until one of us gets the mana to finish healing.”

With that, I bedded down for the night.

That night I dreamed. I was back in Sam’s office or prison; I guess it was one and the same. While I had hoped that I had turned the corner with him and he would take it easy on me moving forward, I guessed that I was wrong because I was back to watching the wall with the clock ticking. That clock had almost caused me a nervous tick before, and I now think that if he kept it up, then I would develop a reaction to hearing a clock outside of this office.

One tick every second, sixty ticks a minute, one clonk every five minutes, and a bell every 15. Always there, always in the background. The wall was nice but more fun than before. This one was wood paneling that had a nice processed wood from the 70s look about it. It was kind of odd that I could notice things about the wood since I couldn’t move, but I could focus my mind on looking in my peripheral vision and see more. I wasn’t changing where my eyes were looking because I could not, nor was I changing the focal length that my eyes were looking because, once again, I was unmoving. I could not react to changes. My eyes would never adjust to the dark here or to the light. I just was as I came unmoving, trapped in my mind.

After a few hours of looking at the wall and listening to the clock and to Sam’s work, he spoke smoothly with almost a joy, “Arn, foolish Arn. You kicked over a hornet’s nest with what you did and even more so with what you asked! Oh, how delightful this is….”

With that, my view changed, and Sam was at his desk, and so was I. He had a beer again but no growler. This time he was in a dark black tunic with the number 47 in white on it. He was smiling when he looked at me and said, “I haven’t had this much fun in a long time. Yes, it was a god you pissed off and you did it greatly. See you made the god of war mad at you with your little stunt down in the Wretched Wood.”

He smiled and took another drink, “What a great mess you made of things. That forest that you left there caused the undead in half the forest to move to the side without an enemy and you pinned it there. You foiled the invasion of the dwarven kingdoms to the east. They were already moving up and over when you called over half of the army away.”

Sam was laughing at this point. “You foiled over a hundred years’ worth of work in under a week and didn’t know that you did it. The Necromancers in the army of the dead have to go and pull the skeletons away one by one if they want them back, and you even took wraths, zombies, and ghouls. They didn’t know what happened until a whole column of death nights failed to show up. The great thing is that forest of yours is growing already and so they can’t get close. It would take them longer to reclaim their undead then it would for them to create new provided that they can find the bodies. Add to that only the living can go near since the forest would draw the undead and trap any liches that tried to go close. They could take out the trees but by the time they realized what was going on there were enough undead around the area that the living could not get close enough to attack the trees.”

Sam smiled and drained his mug. “So the god of war was mad with you because what was going to shape up to be one of the largest wars against those who don’t worship this pantheon turned into a route and is being used to show how weak the pantheon is. It took him a while to find you since you moved so far, but when he did, he broke the rules and attacked you directly!”

Sam leaned back in his chair. What was even better was you were underground when he did that and not on the surface. He couldn’t see where you were directly, only where he could not see, and so he thought he would get you with his attack!”

Sam stood up and spun a quick circle, laughed a chuckle, and spoke with glee, “then you asked me if you made a god mad, which because of the rules that I’m bound to because of the problems with you, I had to look to see if this would be knowledge you would know. Which it would have been, as you guessed, you made one mad for some reason, the destruction was far too focused to be random chance, but you see, they can’t directly attack like that without recourse. So because of that attack, another god is able to act directly. Which will cause all sorts of other problems.’

Sam sat back down and calmly stated, “Because the god of war acted directly against someone that was brought here by another then that other one can act in a direct method. Then the god of war doubled down and sent your location to some of the dark ones in a dream and so that war party got to you so that added some more that could be done.”

Sam went from leaning back in his chair to slowly leaning forward and said, “So the one who called you pointed out that because you’re level 0 the rules say that the gods can’t send direct help to either you or your direct enemies. No quests can be given to help or harm you. Yet because this has happened he is able to do so in kind he is sending a gift to you and he will be holding on to the direct intervention for when and if it is needed.”

Sam snapped his fingers, and I woke up.

* * *