The following day I woke up stiff and with the hungover debuff. It was just a mess of a morning. No matter how great a chair is, it still sucks to sleep in it. More so when the whole thing was wooden. I grabbed my bucket and headed into the yurt. I had things to do.

About half an hour later, I was in the safe room getting food. There was no cure known to anyone that would get rid of a hangover. The best that could be had was bacon, egg, with biscuits and gravy. Coffee should help, but it never did not, even when there was magic about.

Worse yet, I had the buff easily intoxicated. Yeah, it wasn’t an adverse effect which meant that even if I had something that would strip debuff off, it wouldn’t remove this. It also wouldn’t make drinking the Drink of the gods an attack. Which meant that in places like the safe room, it could be freely given.

Then it was back to Kasidy and hopefully Blink. I wasn’t sure if she would be back, but we would wait. After all, I got carried away in making my elevator. So much so that I got tracked down by some harpies. Unless, of course, the harpies lived on top of The Tail. If they did, then there were other reasons not to go that way.

When I showed up in the tree house, I proved that even after a night of solo drinking and a massive hangover to boot, I still got up before Kasidy. She was asleep and snoring in the hammock.

I took a few moments to look around the room and noticed that in the time that we were here, Kasidy had somehow made the place a mess. She didn’t even need to cook in the tree house since she could go to the safe room. But she did. She also managed to spill ink and spread her few belonging across most of the room.

I didn’t get it. Even before my stuff became magical enough to clean itself, I would take care of everything. I built a store room just to make sure I wasn’t dealing with piles of things. Yet, Kasidy somehow managed to spread her stuff out and thoroughly trash this place.

The only thing about the room that made me feel a little better was that Blink was curled up by the fire. As I got close to her, she opened one eye and then faded away. I smiled and held a laugh in, knowing it would hurt my head.

I sighed and tried to wake Kasidy up. “Kasidy, time to get up. We have miles to make up for today.”

She only slightly rolled in the hammock. “Kasidy! Wake up!”

The second try mostly did the tick, and she slowly set up. “Arn, you’re back. I thought you would be back last night, so I stayed up.”

I grimaced a little. “Yeah, well I had something important that I needed to take care of. Why don’t you get up and get this placed picked up. I’ll be in the safe room when you’re ready.”

With that, I headed in. I already needed a nap to help with the headache. So when I got in, I just went up to one of the rooms and passed out.

I woke up a few hours later and went downstairs. Kasidy wasn’t in the tavern, so I grabbed some food quickly and headed out. When I got out, I saw that she had fallen back asleep.

I knew that, in many ways, this was my fault. If I hadn’t had the hangover, I would have gotten her up and moving faster. As it was, I let her sleep a bit more. She also wouldn’t have been so tired if I had come back like I said I would.

I took a deep breath. “Kasidy! Up!”

Kasidy jerked awake. She tried to jump out of the wooden hammock but got tangled in her blanket and fell out. She yelped when she hit the ground. Her yelp caused Blink to hiss and jump to the other side of the room.

I tried not to laugh. Not because of the hangover since that was gone. Nope, I knew that I had to check on her first before I could laugh at someone falling. Even if my typical reaction was to laugh first and check second.

I knelt down next to Kasidy. “Kas you okay?”

She was rubbing her forehead when I asked. “Yeah, it just caught me by surprise. Sorry I went back to sleep. I’ll get up now.”

She slowly got untangled from the blanket and got up. She was still groggy, but at least she was moving now. When she stood up, however, she just looked around like she didn’t know what to do.

I shook my head. “Kasidy, we need to pick up and go. Would it help to go to the safe room and get breakfast first?”

She just nodded her head for a bit and then, still barefoot, shuffled over to the door to the safe room. I took a moment to sigh. I knew that she woke up slowly, but this was just sad. It had to come from working nights for so long as a barmaid.

I looked around again and then called out. “Blink do you want food?”

Blink shot me the image of her killing a rabbit as we walked. Then another of her sleeping more by the fire. I laughed and went into the safe room.

Kasidy had her head down on the first table, and it looked like she was asleep. Dave waved me over right as I was about to say something to her. I walked over to the bar.

Dave lifted up two plates. “She asked that I hold off on food till you got in. With the time difference it was close to half an hour.”

I sighed. “I know she doesn’t drink coffee much but lets get her some so that we can get going.”

Dave laughed and grabbed a tray dropped the food on it, and headed to the sleeping table. I was a few steps behind, but Dave managed to get Kasidy awake. She was already drinking the coffee and making funny faces.

Kasidy didn’t say anything as we ate, but a few minutes later, we were heading out of the safe room. We still had to pack up her stuff before we headed out, but we would be on the trail by ten.

I was wrong. I couldn’t understand how picking up, and packing could get dragged for so long. It wasn’t like she had to go through things. It was just her personal equipment that was everywhere. However, this time instead of just dumping everything into her bag, she folded it and rolled it. Then undid it all and tried again. She kept at it for a while until she smiled and picked up her bag.

I took one last look around. “Okay let’s go. We have a lot of miles to make up. We also need to be on the look out for harpies. I don’t know where they are from but we need to be careful.”

Blink sent to me, “Baits.”

I snorted and walked out. The three of us could fit easily on the lift, so we went up all in one group. The top was the place I was most worried about, but with my standard, I figured we would be mostly okay.

Kasidy asked. “Can we look over the edge before we leave?”

I thought a moment and nodded. “Yeah, just don’t fall off.”

She smiled at me, and we headed over to the side. She looked over for just a moment before backing away. Then she shook her head and moved up close again to look over.

After a few minutes, we headed off. Kasidy was just as shocked as I was by the size of the trees. From below, it was hard to tell that they were huge, but up here, it was easy. With how tall they were, walking through was both easy and spooky.

Once we were in the forest, the trees blocked out much of the light. It caused the ground cover to be sparse and the light to be tinged green. The places where a tree fell were the only places that showed much underbrush.

Kasidy smiled. “This place is eerie and beautiful. I am sure other people have been up here but this just looks like an untouched wonder.”

I nodded. The size of the trees reminded me of pictures I had seen of giant redwoods. The big difference was that these weren’t evergreens. Their branches went out, creating giant canopies that seemed to interlock.

We pushed north for the rest of the day. There was just nothing up here. Blink couldn’t even find a rabbit. The whole forest was without animals. At least on the ground level. We could hear the birds up in the canopy.

We settled in that night with another thicket which was funny to see. In most places, it would have just formed a dense part of the forest and not stood out. Here, however, the thicket stuck out like a sore thumb. Nowhere else were there hundred-foot-tall vines. Nor was there undergrowth. So, here where it was produced magically, it stood out.

The other fun thing about this thicket was the tree house wasn’t just twenty feet up in the air. Nope, it stretched itself and put the tree house in the canopy. Which meant that we had 150 feet of stairs to climb before we got to our lodging.

That night as we laid down to sleep, I was sure that Kasidy would just drift off. She had been slow to start, and so I had pushed us all day. Then I answered more questions about my early life. She wanted to know about Lorrie, so I told her more. I didn’t tell her how she died. I didn’t get that far.

Then when I was drifting off, she asked. “Arn, what happened to make you lose a finger?”

I rolled on my back and sighed. “Got shot off by a skeleton with a crossbow.”

She didn’t even try to hide that she was excited. “How did that happen?”

“Well my hand was where it shouldn’t have been when he shot and so I lost the finger.”

Then I rolled over. The finger was something that I was a little salty over. Not only did I want the room to wear another ring. I wanted my full grip back, and I didn’t know how hard it would be to heal.

The next day we were up and moving like we should have been the day before. As the sun came up, we were out of the thicket. We picked up the pace and moved quickly. There was any way something would sneak up on us when there was nothing around.

As we moved through the forest, I started to feel like something was watching us. The hairs on the back of my neck started to stand up. I didn’t have any magical skill that would tell me something was about to strike, but my standard did. So when it flashed into being and then went completely white. I knew something had happened.

There was a crashing and a roaring sound that I heard next. Kasidy screamed but didn’t run. Blink wasn’t in the dome, but she was somewhere around. I slammed the standard into the ground just as the dome cleared up.

On the ground in front of me was a large winged lizard. It didn’t look like Drath in my dream. Nope, this one was the size of a greyhound and had bat wings and only two legs. I focused on it to get a pop-up.

Forest Wyvern

HP 200

Weight 150 lbs

Armor rating 12

Forest wyverns are the smallest of the wyvern family. These flying lizards are naturally territorial and will attack anything not part of it’s roost. Wyverns hunt in groups ranging from 3 to 20.

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