I sighed and went to lean my chair back. The problem was I only had a single leg, which ended in a nub. So when I shifted myself in a typical stretch, I started to slide out of my chair. I ended up scrambling to try to keep myself in my chair. I failed to catch myself as I overcompensated and slid to my legless right side.

I yelped as I fell, hitting my head on the table. Dave laughed as Kasidy came running around the table. I wasn’t entirely out of the chair as I was hanging onto the table, but I couldn’t right myself.

Kasidy grabbed my left arm, pulled me back into my seat, and asked. “What happened to you?”

I lowered my head and rubbed my sore face. “It’s a long story.”

Kasidy pursed her lips. “With how time works here, I am pretty sure we have a long time before they get here.”

I nodded slowly. “You’re right, but I would rather only tell the story once, and I don’t want them showing up halfway through.”

She folded her arms and smiled. “Arn, you look like crap. I’m going to need to know what happened if I am going to help get you patched back up. The sooner you tell me, the sooner we can figure it out.”

I nodded. “Yeah, but neither of us has slept well, and I need the rest if we are going to figure out how to save you.”

Kasidy nodded and started to get up in fright. “I just thought about it! I should head back out so the curse doesn’t kill me faster.”

Dave smiled and put his hand on hers, holding her down. “Don’t worry about that. The leaching nature of the curse means that it happens on the time of the one getting the experience from you. Not on your time. While you do age faster in here, you aren’t going to die from this in here. The blade takes your levels at about one a day out there.”

Kas slumped back down into her chair and smiled. “Okay then, yes, we both need to get some rest, and I expect to hear the story about what happened to you once the others get here.”

I nodded and motioned for the skeletal guards to get me to one of the guest rooms. If I left into the dungeon master’s room, time would speed back up. While there were good reasons for going that route many times, like the shower I could have in there; the guest room made more sense this time. I needed rest, and I couldn’t stand for a shower.

As Kasidy headed into her room, she turned and looked at me. “The whole story Arn. We need to know what is going on so that we can help.”

I nodded and called out from the steps. “I will!”

The bath was painful until I got used to the heat being directly on my magically sealed leg. Then, I started to think about what I needed to do. I had to find a dungeon deep enough to get what I needed to save Kasidy. Unfortunately, I didn’t own a dungeon that deep, so I would have to dive deeper.

Which meant that I needed to be able to walk. So I needed to get healed or find a way to make myself a leg. Either way, I needed the rest of our equipment that I left outside the city in the wagon. I was missing having my pack and other gear.

As I thought about that, I sighed. I wanted to cry at the loss of equipment. My moccasins were gone; I had lost part of my set of greaves. My short sword was at the bottom of a massive hoard of rats. I didn’t know where my staff was or even my totem. My whole kit was busted to pieces.

I was starting to panic a bit as my brain started to run out of control. There was so much that I lost, so much time that I had put into equipment only for it to be gone now. Worse than the equipment, however, was Kasidy. I had just started to let people in, and now I might be losing her.

I got myself together a bit and thought it through. I had just about everything I needed to craft up new equipment and fix many of the problems I faced. Because of the guild, I didn’t have to fashion anything as armor. However, I would still need to give it runes if I wanted it to help me move. Then there was Kas and the guys. I owed them the truth about me.

I organized my thoughts for a bit. The first thing that I needed to do was ask the Sisters to fix Kasidy. Dave said it would take someone higher up in the line to overrule the curse, which should be the Sisters. Since I was their shaman and had completed all their requests, I figured they owed me. Blink was even Chaos’s priestess!

They could cure her, so I set the problem of Kasidy aside. Breaking a curse would be easy for them. However, I wasn’t sure about my missing body parts, so I needed to figure out how to deal with that. If they couldn’t regrow me, I needed to find out what could.

Irwin had said he could regrow limbs if he were a better healer. But, since he still hadn’t become one, we were a ways off with him helping. Still, I now had a network of gates that went places out than my dungeons. So that meant I might could go to a city and get help from a better healer.

If that wasn’t going to happen for some reason, then I could make myself something. At least, I was mostly sure that I could. Using a combo of necromancy and armor along with some runes, I was working through plans for making my very own prosthetics.

Then there was the problem of running Westiral. I wasn’t sure where it encompassed, so I wasn’t sure who would be coming to talk to me on that front. It could be just a few people, or it could be a dozen cities. I just didn’t know, so I needed better maps.

Then there was the orc problem and the undead problem. I could slowly get some of the undead under control using the lich. Renfry could also claim undead, so we might be able to get the massive army in my castle taken care of. If I could get them under control, I could expel the orcs from the city and repair it using the core.

There was also the problem of Lilac; if Tro hadn’t been lying, which I was pretty sure he couldn’t, then she was the princess of Cloudia, and they thought she was dead. I needed to get her home and hope they didn’t turn against me because of Necromancy. Lannah was good and scared about the skills, and I wasn’t even using them then. If everyone in Cloudia felt that way, things could go sideways quickly.

Then there was the problem of Lannah, which I just needed to tell Kasidy about. We could figure out what all was going on from there. I hoped she could help me get out of the bonding, marriage, or whatever it was. I didn’t know Lannah that well, and it was a desperate thing I did when I entered the contract.

I let my brain drift for a moment to see if I had anything else that I needed to deal with. I had the merchant guild task force survivors and the former slaves. Both groups I needed to deal with, the task force a bit more harshly though they were at least now sworn to me. The former slaves I needed to get back to their homes or someplace.

After sorting out everything in my mind, I knew my next steps, which meant that it was time to get out of the tub and into bed. The fun part, however, was getting out of the tub itself. The problem was the room layout. Only one undead could get next to the tub at a time, and even at half my average size, I weighed more than one of them. So when they went to help me up, it got pulled down. So I ended up having to pull myself out of the tub.

By then, I was mad again and dragged myself over to the bed. If it were any place other than the safe room, I would have been covered in dust or dirt from the floor when I got to the bed. As it was, I dripped water the whole way.

Once I got into bed, I fell asleep thinking through all the problems I was having.

By your actions today

You have increased your level Dungeon Lore (Level 17)

New knowledge has been granted to you!

Leadership (Level 6)

Interrogation (Level 2)

Diplomacy (Level 1)

I hated that right as I was falling asleep, I would get that stupid pop-up. It always caused me to wake right back up for a moment. As I drifted to sleep, my mind latched onto one thing I hadn’t thought through.

I whispered. “How did Blink get that big?”

Then I dreamed.

* * *