The wyvern fight took a ton of our energy. I wasn’t happy about heading forward without any shield. However, the screening of eight zombies flying high above eased my nerves a bit. I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep the ground-bound ones as I couldn’t fix their problems, and they were slow.

For now, I had them running drag behind us so that if anything came up that way, they could warn us. However, I was seriously thinking about just wholly getting rid of them. There wasn’t a mana drain or anything by keeping them around. The only issue that I seemed to have was control.

I didn’t lose the ability to tell them what to do or anything. More in that, I just had problems juggling everything that they were doing. If I had to tell them how to fly, it would have been even worse, but as it was, I just had to command them to fly. A generalized attack this or that wasn’t much of a problem. However, if I wanted them to fly in a search pattern, I had to tell them what it was.

They couldn’t share with me what they saw, which was good and bad. Good, because I wasn’t sure I could deal with all that input. Bad, because they were zombies and couldn’t tell me what they saw. They could only attack or not attack based off of what I wanted them to do.

So when we got to the other edge of The Tail, we stopped. It wasn’t like we couldn’t go down. This side was a gentle 30-degree slope. Kind of what I would have expected on a slide. Which meant that going down was going to end up being slow. Or it would end up being very fast and painful.

I pulled out a thicket club and turned to Kasidy. “We are going to stay up here tonight and figure out getting down tomorrow. Besides it looks like of bleak down there.”

Kasidy gulped and looked back at the zombies. Then she nodded and stepped back to make room for the thicket. I started connecting the thicket growth stake to the close by trees and had it boot up.

As it started to make, I looked over at Kasidy. I could tell she was nervous. I was guessing it was about the zombies or perhaps that I had made them. The problem was I thought that we had already covered that and so that shouldn’t be the issue.

When the tree house part of the thicket finished, we headed up. Just like last time, we were dealing with a hundred-fifty-foot set of stairs going around the center point. The trees in this forest were just massive.

When we got to the top, I commanded the zombie wyverns to settle in nearby trees and wait. The ones on the ground I had start a slow patrol around. They were to let me know if there was anything. While they couldn’t tell me what it was or even show me, they could let me know.

Then I started in on dinner. “Kasidy what’s wrong? You seem all worked up. It was a hard fight, but we are fine.”

She shook her head and sighed. “Arn, there’s so much I just don’t understand. You have the spells of a necromancer and now you have zombies flying around. There are the dungeons that you command and travel between. Then there is everything that you have. It all has a core in it. From your spoon to your sword everything is magical!”

She dropped her bag and slumped onto the chair. “Nothing about you is normal. I can get over the zombies you haven’t tried to turn me into anything. You don’t seem cruel and driven by power. But you scare me. You scare me a lot!”

She started to cry. It wasn’t that little bit of tears, but full-on someone needs to give her a hug bawl. The thing is, I was pretty sure that she wasn’t someone I should give a hug to. I could pat her on the back and say there there, but I couldn’t give her much more support than that, seeing how she was crying because of me. At least, I thought so.

Her whole body was into the cry within just a few moments. It was kind of amazing to watch, just like a car wreck in a snowstorm. Lucky for me, just as I was trying to figure out both what to do with Kasidy crying and the large snot bubbles that were showing up, Blink saved me.

Blink moved over to Kasidy and simply threw her huge lizard head into Kasidy’s lap. Kasidy, for her part, seemed to understand that hugging the mass-murdering lizard would give her great happiness, and so did. What confused me was how quickly the crying turned to laughing as Blink licked the tears off of Kasidy’s face.

I shook my head and started the process of making dinner. I was looking forward to finding a town and getting grains and other items. Once we got to the first town, I planned on buying a wagon or perhaps a few horses to get us moving faster. But I also planned on buying a ton of dry goods and then filling my storage room with what we needed.

However, that was for later. Tonight’s dinner would be another soup of wild sheep and roots. I was happy that every few days, we got a chance to go into a safe room for food, but I was getting seriously bored of the same meal. If it was only me, I could have done it just because I was traveling and knew that it would take less time. However, cooking for the two of us was getting old fast.

About the time dinner was ready, Kasidy spoke up. “Arn, I was scared today. Those wyverns were nasty. I couldn’t do anything to them and then when your magical shield fell I thought I was going to die. I don’t have any real way to help you fight. I’m just a singing barmaid.”

I served up our meal and thought about what she was saying. I almost wanted to ask her if that was her class. However, in most of the books that I had read, you never asked someone about their stats or class. That said she was willing to party and that would show my class.

I sat down at the table. “So is singing barmaid a type of bard?”

Kasidy looked down at the table for a moment and then sighed. “Yeah, it kind of is. I guess that this is kind of like your secrets. There are places that if it was found out that I was a bard would kill me. That’s why I was on the road.”

I leaned back and looked at her a bit. “So why don’t they want bards?”

She gave a dry laugh. “Lots of reasons. The biggest is mind magic. While most professions have some we deal in large area magic. A high level bard’s magic can reach anywhere their song can. Then there are the songs and stories themselves. We teach history as much as anything and many people don’t like the past to be remembered. Then there is the common problem that many male bards tend to have.”

I snorted a little, thinking of the games I had played. “And what is that common problem?”

“They like to seduce anyone they think they can get something from. Most of the bards I have met tend to be part of a local thieves guild. In fact on my way out of the city I was just in I was approached by the guild asking if I wanted to join. I’m not even a true bard but they wanted me.”

I smiled a little at that and then thought about something else I needed to ask Sam. Kasidy just said that most professions have mind magic. I needed to find out more about that and how to counter it.

I finished a bite of soup and asked. “So why do you say you’re not a true bard?”

She sat for a moment and then answered. “My class isn’t bard. It was odd though I am sure that I got it from Bartholomew himself. He came and visited a tavern that I was working at. The next day my class changed from barmaid to singing barmaid. My active class skills changed and I got access to magic. Up to that point I didn’t have a mana pool or at least I didn’t have a way to access it.”

I nodded and smiled. “So can bards do magic without music?”

She shook her head. “No all our spells are from songs.”

“I’m not talking your class spells could you learn a new spell that wasn’t a song and use that or are you restricted?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. It’s hard enough to learn a new skill learning a whole new way to cast spells would be close to impossible. I use my songs to move my mana. A mage does something else. I don’t think that I could teach you to do even my most basic song. It just doesn’t happen.”

I thought through what she was saying as I finished eating. I had at least two, perhaps three ways of moving mana. I had the shaman’s dances, regular fast spells, and I had Ki. The last was kind of like the dances, but it wasn’t. I also wasn’t doing much with it because it was so hard to use.

After dinner, Kasidy went over to the hammock and pulled out her panpipes, and started to play through her music again. The melodies were amazing to listen to. Her ability to play made me relax a bit. I always liked music; I just wasn’t very good at it. I could read music and pick through things but not like her.

Then I snorted. I could pick through something on a piano, and I could read music on Earth. I could almost bet that here if I looked at notes, they would move all over the place. I didn’t know how I was going to learn to read at all if the words always moved. I knew that skills should be easy for me to pick up, but this one just wouldn’t budge.

The sun was already setting, so I wouldn’t get to ask Sam about mind magic and professions. It was bugging me a little that she said it like it was common knowledge. If that was true, then that meant that I needed better mental defenses. My question for Sam would have to be what the most common counter to mind magic was.

I managed to slip off to sleep that night while Kasidy was playing music and talking. I figured that she wasn’t talking to me since it was so low. So I just zoned out and fell asleep.

* * *