When I awoke, I stretched with my eyes closed like always and rolled over to get out of bed. It was that movement that my phantom limbs betrayed me. My brain hadn’t caught up to where my body was. I had entirely forgotten the facts of my condition. So without any undue ceremony, I found myself face-first on the safe room floor.

As I studied the floor with but one eye, I figured it was time to think through everything that had recently transpired. It was as good of a time as any since, for the moment, the pain that shot through my missing foot had subsisted. While it was true that the floor wasn’t as comfortable as the bed, it also wasn’t sharp like the rocks of the cave-in.

If I didn’t find the things Dave listed, I feared that Kasidy would be as good as dead. Especially if the Sisters failed me as they had Maximus; it had been a while since a dream had affected me so. However, the scope of the last one was staggering. Maximus had worked for so many years just to get to the level requirements for godhood. The whole time continuing with his fight against the Dark ones but distancing himself from the Sisters.

I forced my mind back on the present and not the dream world. I didn’t care what happened to the other guy and how he dealt with the Sisters. If what Sam had told me so long ago was right and my dreams were related to my skills, then it didn’t matter. At least not much.

I needed to figure out how to regrow my missing body parts. That was the top and most important thing. This likely meant I needed to go into a deeper dungeon and get the right stuff. The problem with that, of course, was that I needed to be able to move. It wasn’t like I could just waltz through the gates with an undead army.

I gave a smile and a slight laugh. “Well, I guess I could. But how big of an army could I take into a dungeon?”

I pushed myself off the ground and clawed my way back onto my bed. “Then there’s Kasidy; I can’t visit the temple to Order and Chaos if I can’t walk. Too many trees….”

I sighed. I did that all to myself. Making my waterfall a place that the undead couldn’t go seemed great at the time. The problem was now, if I showed up there with my throne being carried, I would go face first into the ground as my undead chairmen would die.

I shook my head and called for my skeletal guards. “I still don’t know what to call a perma-dead undead.”

A few excruciating and awkward minutes later and I was sitting at a table, down in the safe room. I needed to regain mobility and lessen the pain of the missing parts. It would suck to fix my mobility, only for each step to be painful, which meant that I needed to figure out why my leg wasn’t healing over, and it was just sitting there showing all the insides.

More than that, however, I needed to get my vision sorted. Trying to make things with only one eye would cause more problems than I wanted. So that meant I needed to deal with the pain first, and then I needed to deal with my vision, and after that, I could work on walking.

Every day inside the safe room was an hour outside of it which meant that I had time. Not much time, but I had time to get this right. I could spend a day of real-time fixing my problems so that I could go see the Sisters and get them to help me fix Kasidy’s problems. Then after getting Kasidy fixed, I could figure out what to do with the rest of my life.

I had been pushing so hard to find Lannah and then figure out how to gain levels that I was no longer sure what I wanted. I had Kasidy with me now if I could save her and friends that could help me. I had a fife to rule and perhaps a king that I needed to see. I also had a city full of undead that I could try to use to beat back the orcs that were attacking somewhere.

I let a deep breath out slowly and waved over to Dave. “Dave, let’s get some breakfast for me and perhaps Kasidy. I figure she’ll be hungry when she gets down. It can’t be too much longer as I made enough noise to wake the dead.”

Dave nodded slightly and started over to me. He had been oddly quiet as I came downstairs. He usually would have greeted me, but for some reason, he hadn’t. He lowered his head like he was worried about something as he came over. Which to me was odd as he was just the dungeon, so it wasn’t like he had anything to worry about.

I looked up at him and asked. “Dave, what’s going on? You look like you lost a bet or something.”

He gave a dry chuckle and sighed. “Well, it turns out I kind of did.”

I gave him a sideways glance. “What bet?”

“Dungeon Lord, I was wrong about Kasidy’s curse. It seems that time in here counts the same as time out there. While I thought it would give her more time to be in here, it seems it cut her days down.”

I yelled and tried to stand all at once. “What do you mean!”

For the second time that day, I remembered too late that I was missing my ability to stand and found myself on the ground. This time, however, my face tried to pass through the table only to discover that it couldn’t, which sent a shockwave of pain to my missing eye. It all reminded me that I had failed.

I failed Kasidy by leading us to this place. I failed her when I went down the stairs. I failed her when she got captured and when she got hurt. Now I failed her when I brought her into the safe room. I was too weak, and I knew it. My inability to protect myself and others led to all of these problems.

I pulled myself back up to the table and growled. “How could you be wrong on this? How many days did you cost her?”

Dave looked down at me and pulled out his glass from nowhere. “She only lost one day before we found out. As to how I’m wrong? I don’t know. Every other curse or effect works how I thought this one would. Even your prayers double up. The only thing I can think of is that her curse is sending and not being pulled. If it’s residing in her, it would be like you praying. It would just all build up and then go out. If her stats are being leached out like what I thought the curse did, then it would be being pulled.”

“She’s already out of the safe room, I take it?”

Dave just silently nodded as he cleaned his glass.

I glared at Dave. I knew it wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t even real. Just a magical AI feeding me the information that he had. He was skewed to answer according to how he was programmed, and his knowledge was limited to what he had stolen from people’s minds.

He nodded. “Dungeon Lord, that’s all true. Nothing about me is real; no matter how much you think of me as your friend, I’m not. I am your servant, much like a golem but tied to this location.”

I sighed and shook my head again. “While I am angry, this changes little. She can’t be here while I work, and I can’t tell her my story. I still know what I need to do, and I have mostly the same amount of time to do it in.”

Dave nodded and then walked back to the bar. A few minutes later, I was eating as I thought through what I needed or, rather, what I wanted to do. While I would love to have somehow turned a few bones into an undead leg that somehow connected to me, it wouldn’t solve my problem.

If I used the undead anyway, my thickets and forest would break it. Which meant that I needed to figure out a different way to walk. I needed the equipment in the wagon, and having my engraving tools would be helpful. Even more so would be the chunk of wood that Ni’Bish had given me.

I slammed my fists on the table and growled. “I WISH I COULD WRITE!”

Then I looked over at the bar. “Dave! If you write a note, will it survive out of the dungeon?”

He looked up at me and nodded. “Yes, Dungeon Lord.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Cut all that crap out. You know I don’t like it! Now get over here and bring something to write a note with. I need things, and this is the only way to get it all.”

* * *