In the wee hours of the night, Sonya snuck out. She hadn't so much as touched her new card spell, yet. She instinctively knew how it should work but the card wanted her to visualize two points and keep both in her mind. It wanted to be used. The card itched.

She was doing her best to visualize where she was.

Once she had a firm idea where she was in space and time, she considered another spot. She had chosen a corner of the wall to be her focal point as it was very distinct. The other requirement from her gate card was that she had been there before. Has she focused on the point? She could see herself almost in third person. Then what she saw was a jumble of lines leading all over the place. Then the line continued back in a straight line and she knew that was their path here.

Instantly she was sucked out. Then she thought it up again. She brought herself back into the meditative trance and thought about where she was and she thought about a singular appointment along her path. That point just so happened to be the corner where she had spent a little bit of extra time.

She focused on where that was in relation to where she was. As she did so she could feel an aperture. There was a shade between them and she felt like if she just tugged a little bit she could pull the shade back, and the spaces would be connected. She reached down with a hand directing the shade upwards. As she did, the space in front of her transformed. There was a flat oval in front of her and by throwing it, she could see another view of their yard.

She tentatively threw a rock through it. If the death knight had used this, it must have good control. She could feel her own control wavering. She was strong but her magical control took a lot of concentration. It was one of the reasons why she chose to be a back line fighter.

The Rock sailed through and she could see it dropping through the aperture. The gate itself was an oval about the size of a door. Seeing the rock drop momentarily confused her and the gate winked out of existence.

She was, in Anthony's, words a glass cannon. He had said a bit more, especially about her being a beautiful glass cannon that any beverage would be honored to be drunk from. Now she realized that she's going to have to work on her control. It was fine to have thick walls when one was building a tower defense against zombie dwarves. If someone wanted to keep a very fine thin portal open however, then one needed the minute control of an experienced mage.

Just to be sure, Sonya walked over to the corner and checked on the rock. It was the same rock as before. She was ready to try to move something living. Maybe not tonight but soon. Picking it up, the rock felt normal but who knew with these things.

"Do you maybe want to make some rock music?" She whispered to it. "Tell me your secrets?"

The rock didn't give away anything. She smiled. Thinking that it was going to be smoking with eldritch magic hadn't panned out.

Sometimes a magical portal was just a magical portal.

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"What do you think about three or four days here?" Anthony said over breakfast. He passed Finley something baked into a half circle shape. Someone had called it an empath nada.

Finley wasn't entirely sure about the naming convention, but he accepted the hand sized item readily.

"This is what Andrew made with that special grill, right?" Finley said. "Earth is strange."

"Andrew isn't from Earth," Anthony said. "He told me a bit about his home. You know that he hadn't even seen a human before?"

"That is odd. But they are rarer in the dwarven lands. I should ask him about his world over lunch," Finley said. The entire pastry had made it past his teeth in record time. "This is amazing. Your empaths surely know more than nada."

Anthony smiled. Finley didn't get it, but they were the ones with the weird foods.

"When my Tia taught me how to make those, I never thought that I would be feeding them to an elf king," Anthony said. "Your majesty, I am so pleased that you enjoyed our food."

"King of the Tinkers, not the elves," Finley grumbled. Even that felt like a stretch. The green had called out to him and he had remembered the time before. It had been so long ago and such a dark time for him. The problems that he had then seemed so inconsequential now. "We've been traveling together for a week now. I haven't asked you this but if you wanted, there is a way for you to join the Tinker family."

Anthony eyed him skeptically. Finley was used to the sort of scrutiny that new people would give him. Years of traveling around the continent had given him a fair amount of exposure to new people. Tinkers always had to be trading and part of trading was talking to people. Sure people were nice, but when they knew that you were eventually leaving and they wouldn't have to deal with you, they treated you a bit differently.

Anthony was stuck with him. Finley had kinda made that happen himself by picking the man up and then the whole thing turned into the most unhinged week and a half of his life. He had seen monsters before, having been in the habit of checking if there were any reports in the towns his visited. But not having anyone in the towns that didn't want to kill him? That was new.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

This all brought him back to his question. He knew that he would be able to make Anthony a Tinker. What he needed was the man's enthusiastic support of the idea.

"What does that entail?" Anthony said.

"I will give you an uncommon card. This lets other Tinkers know that you're one of us, but... That matters less now than it did."

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Finley looked at his own Tinker card.

Epic Class Card: Tinker Level 3

Skills:

Barter and Appraisal Level 4

Identify Level 3

Animal Handling Level 3

Storage Level 4

King Level 1

As the last remaining Tinker you have the ability to induct new people into the family.

This is a soul card and cannot be removed.

About the only thing that had advanced had been his storage level. He was beginning to think that he was still in the rut that he had been in before the zombies attacked. Anthony was helping test his storage ability.

"It might help you with a skill or two. Some of the Tinkers I know got strange powers from it. I... Inherited mine, so I had a fully developed card around a merchant skill set and I kept working on it," he said, setting another full barrel in the center of the wagon.

"How does that work exactly? You inherited a card?" Anthony said. "Like it was passed down by an older member of the family."

The wagon stretched. Where once it had taken two maybe three paces, now Finley counted his steps and it was five paces and then some.

"Usually what happens is that when a grandparent dies, their soul card is harvested. That soul card can then be put into someone else's soul deck," Finley said. "I can see your face and no, once the person that was born with it dies, it is no longer tied to their soul. It's not tied to the next owner's soul either. This leads to some very strong families, when one person is excessively lucky and they pass on a great class."

"You are about to tell me the downside, aren't you?" Anthony said. "It's something like this effect here where the interior of this wagon is starting to be larger than the exterior and we're trying to test it out?"

Anthony stopped pacing, turned around and did the paces again.

"Something like that. Your soul has to be ready to accept it if the card is very powerful because a truly powerful card can change the flow of someone's river."

Anthony looked dumbfounded. It had taken him. Tom to get to the other side of the wagon. That had never been an issue before. It was always simple to get from one side to the other and because he left the center line down I obstructed it was ever a problem. But now?

"The flow of someone's river?"

"Of mana?" Finley said. "Oh, right there is no mana on Earth."

"That is a very moist metaphor. I like it. I'm just unfamiliar with it. Hey, let's check this outside."

The two of them walked outside. Anthony stood parallel to the back of the wagon. He then took five paces.

"Finley, this is some really weird shit you've got going on here," he said. "When I was inside of that wagon, I was able to walk five full paces without leaving it and it felt spacious. Here? Outside? I walk five paces and I am three paces away from the wagon. That's three paces further than the interior. Some fuckery is going on."

Finley considered the problem. The wagon was taking on a specific requirement based on his storage power. The next thing they were thinking about would be if they had a long full they could store it inside of the wagon. What he really wanted was a pole that was longer than a wagon was to see that if you put it on one side would it come out on the other. Andrew might be interested in that kind of thing, but he wasn't entirely certain. It was a lot to waste.

He was thinking of a way to unload the wagon to see what it really looked like on the inside when nothing was in there and then see how large the footprint of all the things were. He had heard of cards giving storage spaces like this but it just seemed like its own kind of thing. It was probably five paces wide as well as long based on where all of the crates and barrels had ended up.

"Finley, now that we have really good evidence that your storage power is working very well here, we should also probably test out the weight. I don't know that it can carry as much as we could fit in there and that might be a problem. Do you want to test it out by putting more heavy things in there? We could find some more barrels or something?"

Finley considered it. If there's one thing he wanted to do, it would be to save his Caravan. And then one day perhaps teach new Tinkers how to mark their own caravans up and continue the legacy. He hadn't really considered it up until their arrival the day prior. But he kind of hadn't thought about his future. Being in the reactive mode had kept him from thinking beyond the next five to ten minutes. Now they were intending to stick around for three to four days, because they thought they could get more salvage out of it.

"People have magical weight. We can try putting a bunch of people in this one? I'm loath to put them in there if it means that it's going to break but we might as well try it. It doesn't seem to be a problem. And if we're able to put people in here and potentially they could use this as a shelter. This storage card is excellent. I'm so glad I got it," Finley said. "But if you break my wagon then I'm going to break your face."

Sonya had told him that he could say that kind of thing to be intimidating. He just needed to make sure that no one was going to mess with his wagon.

He was a simple elvenoid and he didn't need for much. They'd already asked a lot of him. Finley knew that they were going to ask for more. He accepted it. That did not make it any easier.

"So basically what you're saying is that we should make a party wagon, and invite everyone over here for a little party. Is that right? Because I could do that. Just a little bit of work and it'll be a mobile dive bar. Everybody here wants to cut loose a little bit and once you find some more beer in this town I'm sure that this will be the spot."

"The party wagon?" Finley said. "I actually think that the Goat Lord would appreciate that. So, yeah, go ahead. Do your best. I just don't want to worry. So if there is a chance that this is going to destroy my wagon. I would like you to be responsible."

There was an electric moment between the two of them. Finley felt like he was giving his child up for adoption to the man. Having never thought that he would bear children, he was forced to consider how fast he could pass them off.

"I think that I could be reasonable. Now. Where do you think we should put the kegs? As well as a buffet. People are going to be hungry and knowing that they can just crash inside of this place or on their bed rolls? They're going to love it, especially if it rains. That's one advantage that we have with the hard top."

"Oh so now we're just letting anyone off the street into a Tinker wagon?" Finley said, glaring.