Once Sonya's secret was revealed, that was all anything we could talk about for a bit. Valerie had gotten trained on the usage of such a spell and she knew the ins and outs of it. Finley listened to her talk about how she had been so pissed that that was what her term paper was about.
Like every dwarf wants to be a bad believer right? And to take down the foes in front of him. But real ones know that that's not where wars are won."
"Oh really? Where are they won?" Anthony said.
"Yes, please tell us as I seem to be having a problem," Finley said.
"They are won in your bellies. An army cannot march on the empty stomach. This is why siege warfare used to be so popular. And everyone knows that you can't make food with card powers. So it's been a limiting factor. But with the gate skill, distances don't matter as much. We used to have to consider how all of your booze was going to get to the front lines. And yes, beer is very important for front line fighters," she said.
Valerie had turned from an angry drill sergeant into a professor in about ten minutes.
"It's just so rare to see a gate card," she said. "You either have to be an absurdly strong magic user or you have to get the card itself. And even then some classes won't let you learn it unless you have seen it. That's why one of the instructors at the academy has it, even though it is a national treasure."
Finley sat bolt upright.
"If that zombie has such a card then..." He said.
"Don't worry, he takes it out everyday and puts it into a glass case and that is locked under the highest scrutiny inside of the academy. No one would dream of stealing it from the academy. You'd have to deal with so many angry professors and Senior military officers on your way to do so. Why are you all looking at me like that?"
Anthony turned to Finley and shrugged. He was between a shocked and bemused expression, one that he'd shared many times with the elf.
"It's like she keeps talking but she doesn't understand what she's saying, right, Finley? Like she's talking past herself and then she has to go back and examine what she's saying. Do you find that odd at all?" Anthony said.
"All right team!" Bob said. "We now have a new objective for the day and thank you so much to Valerie, who I assume that we will be giving some formal role in a very short period of time. Do you want to be appointed as the caravans' adjutant or something?"
"Now hold on here a second!" Valerie said.
"Raise your hand if you want to adopt Valerie into the Caravan," Finley said over her shouting.
Every single hand rose. Even the Orcs who had been sleeping underneath a wagon rolled out and raised their hands. This squabble had been too much for them and they were thoroughly enjoying it as well if their faces were any indications.
"All right! Motion is passed. Welcome to the team, Valerie Underfoot. I think that you will find our benefits package is top notch including your stock options and health plan. Please see Stella if you have any questions about either," Anthony said.
"Benefits plan? Stock options?" Valerie said, worry crossing her face for the first time.
"Guys I think we have made enough fun of the poor girl," Sophie said. "Now please, if you would explain what we can do with this power that we're going to have to share, I would appreciate it if you could explain how powerful someone needs to be in order to use or learn that spell."
Sonya rolled her eyes, a human expression that had continually puzzled Finley until he asked about why the women were constantly doing it about Bob. Sonya's explanation that they were kinda laughing at Bob made sense at the time. Outside of cooking and scouting, Bob was pretty ridiculous.
"Well it starts with learning where a person has been and where they can go. We call it a gate path, but the elves call it a life line or something. It's like a map in your mind of where you've been before. Can you envision the spot over there?" Valerie said, pointing to a corner. "Then join the two points in your mind. Once that's joined, hold that mental image of the two places being connected."
Sonya did so and was surprised at how easily the image in her mind turned into an opening aperture. She could clearly see them from the portal next to her. They look so far away. She knew that if she walked through she would be on top of the wall which is where she decided to put it instead of the corner because she was not going to take direction from a little girl.
She might listen and then modify some instruction but she wouldn't just do whatever Valerie said. That would set an interesting precedent and as she was the group's social worker, that might be a problem for her. Sonya put her hand into her convenient rock pocket and withdrew one standard rock. Then she tossed it through the gate.
The gate stood proud and tall as the rock went through.
Everyone could see it land on the wall.
Sonya expected to cheer but was greeted instead by more questions about how it worked. She settled into the questions.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
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After the discussion died down, Anthony brought them back into focus.
"So we're still getting that extra wagon but now we have a way to get places really fast. So what we need to do is get Sonia over there so she can open a portal so we can quickly and efficiently take things. One pile over there, one here. That's what I'm thinking. Does that work for everybody?" Anthony said. "We'll set up the stockpile over here with salvage heading that way and this will save a lot of travel time at least. Sonya just has to go there once, right?" Anthony summarized.
"That's right," Valerie said. "Eventually she'll be able to use a stone as a focus for her gate spell. But I don't think she can do that at level one."
"And we won't need that extra wagon to go out there so we can keep working on what we have here," Bob said. "This will be a good test of her ability to see if we can get things moving from the academy to here. Also, we should probably set up a secondary site if we're going to be there that long. That will also fall to you, Sonya if you accept and maybe Sophie as well."
"Are you ready for a mission with the scouts?" Sophie said, turning to Sonya.
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Sonya, as it turned out, was not ready for a mission with the scouts. Sure, they had worked together before, but the academy grounds hadn't been one of the places that the team had hit the day prior. And now they had to draw out zombies without themselves getting crushed, bitten or killed.
"I don't think that I'm afraid of getting bitten or dying, but I'm really afraid of one of you guys turning and then potentially becoming a death knight just so you know where my head's at. And being the defensive specialist of this group I feel like I should note that if I were in charge I would not have sent myself in yet," Sonya said, as she killed a fifth zombie with an lance of rock and earth.
"Oh but you're missing out on all the fun parts! Sonya! Just going to draw them out and if there are enough then we'll take them back to your little tower defense setup and give them a run for their money. Then we steal their cards and profit," Sophie said.
The academy grounds had been set up to keep the students inside as a primary goal. The secondary goal was keeping outsiders out. Such was the architecture of the exterior walls. An iron fence stretched around it. It was a far cry from the outer wall of the city, which had been all worked stone and tall as most of the buildings around it. When they arrived on horseback, they went around it twice. All of the entrances were locked tight on the side that faced Heirisburg.
Sophie was definitely going to ask Valerie about the name sometime later. She had thought it was a joke before, but now it sounded seriously like they had actually named the place Heirisburg.
"The academy is pretty built up. We should be able to use this as a defensive spot. I can just fill in some of the blanks here with some Earthen walls. The only thing we don't really have is a way to talk to people back in the staging grounds," Sophie said. "Bob, what do you think about using this spot over here on the other side as our entrance? It looks like it was used by the maintenance staff or groundskeepers before."
The small door wasn't off its hinges, but it looked like the simplest one to break. Bob dismounted, trying to look graceful. Sophie knew that he was waiting for a comment on it. His cloak looked majestic on the breeze, and for a moment she could see what Stella saw in him. It was only a moment and then it was gone. Sophie would probably need some time later to reflect on that.
She had named her spear Bob after all. It had been more of a joke than anything but now? Now she was thinking about anything except for him.
"Hey Sophie, can you try and unlock the door?" Stella said from the fence.
While she had been thinking about the merits of companionship and how things would work and how much she didn't have the bandwidth to think about this.
"Yeah let me," She said, dismounting to assist her friend.
They had constituted a pack of thieves' tools to help them break into locked houses. Today, Stella carried it, but as they both had rogue classes, either one could do the work. Stella was always on about doing rogue shit during their downtime, mostly because she only had the one class. Sophie had three between her rogue, druid and warlock class.
It was true that she could swap out a class and give one to Stella or someone else in a trade but the card felt like a part of her now. The card would retain all of its levels. She couldn't take out her rogue card as that one was a soul card or her warlock card because of the stipulations that the Goat Lord had put upon it, but her druid card? It could be traded. She didn't want to trade it, but she could.
Sophie fiddled around with the lock for a half a minute, wondering why nothing was working. Then she stood up and pulled the door. It easily pulled out towards her.
"Did anyone even try this door?" She asked.
All of a sudden, no one would make eye contact with her.
"Suspicious," she said, stepping back to grab her spear.
There had been only a handful of times that they even broke out their lockpicks. Once when they had to open a locked chest. That one only held salacious love letters that went between two dwarves and a sack of gold. Neither one was useful, but Sophie still read through the letters trying to figure out what the heck a dwarven glove actually meant.
Just because she had a good guess didn't mean that she would be approaching their resident local dwarf with her findings. Maybe once she knew the girl better.
Inside the back entrance, there was an open shack with gardening equipment. It was easily the size of a garage or more. Most notably, it was exactly how Sophie liked it.
That is to say, bereft of zombies.
"Alright horses," Bob said. "We've got to deal with the horses. Sonya, are you ready with the touch points?"
"I am."
Sophie felt the magic touch ground next to them. Then the aperture opened, creating a portal back to the staging area. There was a commotion as Finley walked through first followed by Brandon and the monks.
"He wanted to see how it worked," Brandon said. "You try stopping him. He is an elf on a mission."
"I'm here for my horses," Finley said, stroking the head of the first one he touched. "I presume that you are done with them now?"
Finley checked the other ones. His hands flitted over the second briefly. The horse responded to his touch coming closer.
"We are thankful," Bob said, handing off a bay mare to him.
"May I take them back? Are you all able to make it back for dinner then?" Finley said.
"I think that we'll be home on time, Dad," Sophie said.
"I hope so," Finley said, mounting up."Your mother and I have a lot that we want to talk about."
"My...mother?"
Finley moved out, his horse galloping down the packed dirt road. Behind him, the monks got their horses ready and hurried to catch up.