I had Dave wake me up once everyone else was awake, and then I headed down to see them. I knew that it was going to be a long day, but I wanted to get started now. I joined them all for breakfast at the table and pointed at the other table.

I said. “Renfry, I found you some armor that should help out. Turns out that armor from the room up there was better than what you have on. So feel free to take it. Kasidy, Blink was way out of range. I felt like she was heading right towards the mountains.”

Irwin raised just one finger, like asking a question and asked. “Who is Blink?”

Kasidy smiled. “She’s the best! She’s a cute little girl about 6 that follow Arn around. She says she’s the priestess of chaos spreading happiness and joy everywhere she goes. Though some call her Blink the murderous, but that’s just because they don’t know her well.”

Renfry nodded to Irwin. “She is an odd little lizardkin girl. I am not sure what race she is but she called our lord daddy and my oath seems to make me think she is. But when I first met her I could have sworn she was sizing me up for a fight.”

I shook my head. “She’s my companion she is a ropola and likes to hunt. So right now she is tracking the lich. Don’t listen to those two.”

Kasidy flashed me a smile and laughed. “So are we going after her?”

I shook my head. “Not tonight out there. We will head out in the morning. So that means we have about another eight days in here. So Irwin that means you are going to be burning through your skill uses as fast as you can. I am going to see what I can do through the tower to help get you mana potions.”

He nodded to me. “Thank you that should help. In seven days I should have made some good progress on the spells. If you could even double the number of potions I have that would be great.”

I nodded at Irwin and then looked over at Renfry. “We need to talk about hunting undead and how we want to do that. I know that you like being on horseback, but we only have two, and neither one of them is a war horse.”

Renfry gave a curt nod. “For this battle I doubt it would be good to have one mounted fighter and the rest on the ground. If I could ride the horse I could scout for us.”

“We will talk more about it once you have tried out the armor. I still want to see what we can do about better weapons for undead. I have a hammer I could get that casts lay-to-rest on strike but I want to see how that works for you.”

He shook his head. “I’m a blade user the hammer won’t do well for me. It would take me too long to learn the weapon. Lances and blades are all I will ever be good with.”

Kasidy cut in. “Are we pushing through to Cloudia or are you planning on coming back here after the lich?”

I ran my hands through my hair. I didn’t know which, but I was leaning toward pushing through. It would take less time, but people were going to be looking for me soon, and I was going to have to do noble ruler things. Not that I wanted to do those things, but rather I was trying to figure out where best to do them.

I let my breath out slowly and bit my lip for a moment. “I think pushing through. I want to get there and we will be two days that way if we take him out in the castle which is likely where we have to.”

Kasidy looked nervous. “Do you think that we are ready to try to take out the lich? I mean Cloudia failed what make you think that we can do it?”

I shrugged. “I honestly don’t know if we can. I want to hear back from Blink first as to what she found. If we have to we can go around the long way to Cloudia like we first planned.”

Renfry seemed to be considering something before he spoke. “Arn, my lord, you need to think about this carefully. Our map in the tower is outdated. So I don’t know if there are towns that are planning on coming to you or not. If there are any in your lands they will be sending someone soon to speak with you. The tie of the claim will draw them to you. So you will need to speak with them and sooner than later.”

He paused and thought about what he was saying. “If you head out of your lands leaving the lich on in them then you might invite open revolt in the towns. You need to either stay in your lands so that the towns can find you or remove Eric. Once the lich has been removed it will show that you are holding your lands.”

I sighed and slumped back and thought through the problem. If I wasn’t hiding much of who I was from this group, I figured that we would be able to defeat the lich without much of an issue. Honestly, while some undead might be a problem with enough time, I could cut a passage right to the lich. Provided, of course, that there were trees.

The other part of the problem was I was still dancing around what Irwin knew of Renfry. It was kind of easy to see that Renfry wasn’t human but to understand what he was. I already told Renfry that I had a way to deal with undead and Kasidy thought that I got the thicket’s from the dungeon.

So I might be able to keep a few more secrets from this group. I was trusting in the oath that Irwin took about my secrets to keep him from talking about the dungeon and tower. So letting him know about the thickets might not be that big of a problem.

I looked around the table and saw they were all waiting on me. “Okay, so it all depends on what Blink finds. If the area around the lich is favorable for us to try to attack we will. If not then we will have to figure out something else. My hope is that Blink will come back soon and let us know. If however, she isn’t back by morning out there then we will head towards the lich.”

Renfry nodded slightly, but Irwin looked nervous. I looked over at Kasidy, who looked like she wanted to say something but chose to look down. I could tell that she was worried about something, but I didn’t know what.

I asked. “Kas, what’s wrong?”

She took a deep breath. “Just worried about heading right at trouble, that’s all. I joked about how much trouble you have gotten into… But you haven’t gone seeking it. It’s all found you, but….” She sighed out in a slight huff. “This is different, you are going after the lich and I’m a bit scared.”

Kasidy looked like she was about to break down, so I grabbed her hand. “Look Kasidy, we aren’t going to do something stupid. At least I hope we aren’t. That’s why we are looking at the problem before going after it.”

She nodded quickly. “I… I haven’t ever gone towards a fight. I’m a Singing Barmaid, I’m not even a full on bard. I am the least combat oriented of the bard classes. If I were a standard bard then sure I would have something that help but I’m just going to be in the way.”

She placed her other hand on top of mine and sagged her shoulders. With tears coming down her cheeks, she said. “I would stay behind knowing where you are going, but, I can’t. You might push through to Cloudia and Bartholomew wants me to write your story. I can’t do that if I am here. But I’m worried. Really really worried and I can’t even help.”

I wasn’t sure what to do. I was at the limit of my knowledge of how to comfort a crying woman. Just hold their hand and squeeze slightly.

I gave her hand a slightly tighter squeeze and said. “We’ll keep you safe. I get how going after the lich is different. Trust me I want to make sure that we do this as safely as we can. I don’t plan on just charging right in and fighting my way through his horde.”

She nodded slowly and wiped at her eyes a bit. “I’m sorry Arn. I’m scared, I’ve been scared since being separated from my caravan. I thought that I wouldn’t have been scared in town but then everything happened and now this and… and….”

I sighed. I got it; she had been through a lot, and she wasn’t a combat class. Heck, on Earth, the things she had seen traveling with me would have put most people in shock. She was following me out of devotion to her god. She didn’t think things would get worse once we left the city. It should have just been another month up and around the mountains. But unfortunately, things got worse with the lair and now lich.

Renfry spoke up. “Could we deal with the lich and then come back here?”

I nodded and said. “That could work, we would be able to avoid the roads if we did that. Leave the wagon behind here.”

Irwin smiled and said to Kasidy. “The safe room has everything that you need you wouldn’t even need to leave.”

I gave a dry chuckle. “No she will want to stay out of the safe room. With how fast time passes in here it would be a month of her life for everyday we were gone. It would be better to get out of the safe room and wait in the tower.”

Kasidy finished wiping her tears away. “I don’t know if I could stay behind. I would be worried the whole time. I’ll be worried if I go but at least I’ll know what’s going on and then we can keep going. I’m just not sure how useful I’ll be.”

I thought through it for a few moments. I was starting to understand. She wanted to come with us because she didn’t want to be worried about us. But she was afraid because she wasn’t a combat class, and we were planning on going to fight. So if she was left here, she would worry that we would die or just not come back.

I nodded. “We will figure it out. Till then lets find out what songs you can get from Dave. We might not have much to trade with the tower but I might still have enough to buy something.”

I looked at Renfry. “Fancy trying out your new class on some low level undead?”

He pointed up. “Climbing the tower for a few hours?”

I nodded. “It will help, to not be figuring out what you can do before we go after the lich. I figure if the first floor is anything like a normal dungeon then we can finish it off in less than an hour.”

Renfry smiled. “When do you want to head out?”

“Sooner the better. I want to check with the dungeon to see what songs we can get. If there’s something useful then the three of us will head up.”

Irwin asked. “Can I go?”

I shook my head. “Nope, I need you to get as many skill levels in your non-healing spells as you can and that means working you butt off in here. I’ll take you through a level letter but I want you to get your ranged attack spell and that golem.”

He nodded but looked unhappy. “I understand.”

I smiled. “Look Irwin, you are going to be with us soon but right now is the best time for you to work on your spells before we go after the lich. Every hour out there is a day in here.”

He sat up a bit straighter. “I know. I just wanted to be there to heal.”

Renfry gave a faked angry look at Irwin. “You think that I could be hurt by the undead on the first level of a dungeon!”

Kasidy laughed. She was looking a bit better, less like everything was wrong in the world. I had to tell her soon about Lannah; I owed them both that much. But personal things like this could wait.

I got up and said. “Time to get to work, let’s see what songs we can find.”

I headed over to Dave. While I could pull up things in the dungeon interface, Dave could find them much faster if I asked for the right things. It was just that he knew what he was doing and was part of the overall system.

I stepped up to the bar and said. “Dave, looking for songs that Kasidy could use that could help with fighting.”

He nodded toward me and gave Kasidy a smile, then asked. “Okay, Kasidy, what’s your class?”

She sighed and then smiled. “I’m a Singing Barmaid.”

He nodded. “Secondary class?”

She shook her head. “That is the secondary class. My primary is Barkeep’s Daughter.”

He nodded. “You could figure out an advanced class if you wanted.”

She shook her head. “Singing Barmaid will overtake my daughter class soon. Then I will have an easy opening for a secondary class. I don’t know what that will be but I am wanting to keep doors open and not rush anything right now.”

Dave smiled and nodded. Then he pulled out a rather large book from under his bar. As he flipped through it, he would open the binding and pull out a page. Then he would close the binding and flip a few more times. I couldn’t help but think that he was just doing this all as show. As I thought that, he smiled and nodded but kept his work going.

After he pulled out his fifth page, he looked up. “Okay these are the songs that I have for the barmaid sub-class of bard. You got heavily limited on what you could do with that selection. However, I do understand the benefits that it brings with it. The real question is can you afford any of these?”

* * *