Anthony walked around their new staging area. Well it was their new, new staging area. If you counted their time at Heirisburg as the new starting area or Arva, then this was the fourth place that they had fully kitted out.

They had been on the road for a long time. There had been many discussions as to how to outfit an area. Once they got there, everyone agreed that they wanted to be by the water.

The only problem with that was that there were things that lived in the water that had ice and water magic. Realizing that, there was a new strong opinion about placement of their staging area that they previously didn't have.

Finley headed up the goat refueling effort, bringing fresh water. He made his position very clear on the issue whether or not they were going to move from the promontory. He wanted to move far inland.

Anthony was of the opinion that if everyone agreed, they would move. They had several large problems with this.

The first of which was that all the goats that Sophie had summoned had all decided to stick around.

Everyone had expected them to kind of do their own thing. What they had done was start chewing on all the grass around, making clear that it was definitely dinner time for them and that they were looking for some water.

This caused Finley to crack open a barrel of water. He couldn't not feed a hungry goat after all.

After they'd been blessed by the Goat Lord himself coming down to make Sophie's warlock pact, there was no better way to honor their Bond.

Sophie, however, was arguing with the goats .

"Hey guys, I'm not really your mom. I. Am. Not. Your. Mother," She said, punctuating each word. She was adamant. "Would you please stop nuzzling against me? Yes, I am not your mom. And no, I don't know your mother but how about that elf over there? He looks cuddly."

Anthony watched as the goats decided that they might listen to her for once and Finley was chased around the staging area. There were a lot of laughs around, and Anthony's argument with Finley kind of died there.

It was hard to argue with a herd of goats deciding that they were comfortable here. So why not stay put because you are a mommy and daddy now.

"Hey guys, I'm not your dad either," Anthony said. "Maybe that little dwarf over there could be your dad."

There was tacit understanding between the humans and the orcs that they were going to let the goats chase the dwarves and the elves. Or at least that's what it seemed like after all the goats now flocked to Valerie and Andrew. They would take turns between the dwarves and the one elf that the Caravan had.

It was amusing but it wasn't until the sun was very low that the tide of zombies finally went out. They were able to put up just a few goats to man the walls as they came in.

That was when Stella, Bob, Iggy and Brandon showed up.

They explained their trials and tribulations with the new ship that they'd acquired. They had moored the boat at the end of the canal after securing two blocks around it.

"We're going to call it the clubhouse," Stella said.

"We're not going to call the clubhouse," Sophie replied. "We don't even know if it has any room."

"It has lots of room," Stella said. "Unlike your heart."

Sophie feigned a heart attack.

"Oh you wound me bestie, if only we could find a better name for this thing."

Bob looked at both of them.

"You are both as good of fighters as you are bad at naming things," he said and then immediately began dodging potatoes being thrown at him.

"You take that back you lily-livered coward you," Sophie said, reloading her potato cannon.

"Yeah, you lizard-livered-lily-flowered coward," Stella said, tossing a potato at him.

Anthony ducked and weaved around it. He found a spot where he would be out of her range. He didn't want to get the eye of anybody. Sonya was still sleeping off her energy expenditure and he checked on her. She's going to have to wake up and get something to eat.

Anthony sauntered up to the side of the wall. He checked on Morgan. The orc was overseeing the goat's assault on two or three wet flaming zombies. The zombies were wet because they had gone through the underwater trench into the maze.

They were on fire because black flame did not go out.

Even when enough water was applied. He shuttered, thinking about if one of them had gotten hit with black flame how they would have taken it. To be fair, neither were zombies and the fact that they were all chosen, save for a few, had meant a lot of different things for some of them.

They might be able to weather it but Finley? He probably wouldn't. The orcs definitely wouldn't be as well as Valerie.

Valerie came up next to him. She looked tired and wired. He knew that she had volunteered for the night shift and was going to stay up the whole time no matter what the orcs said.

"All in a day's work, right?" He said.

"Indeed. Though I can only take so much credit. The goats themselves are doing well. It almost makes me think that-"

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She trailed off her eyes glazing over.

"Makes you think that what?" He said.

"What do you think is more likely?" She asked. "Do you think it's more likely that she's summoned a herd of goats? Or do you think it's more likely that she converted some dwarves into goats thereby using her chosen powers to..."

Anthony turned, giving her his full attention. He hadn't thought about that.

"When you say converted, what do you mean?" Anthony said.

"What I mean is and I've been talking to Brianna and Andrew about this? There's this human thing about conservation of mass or energy or something like that. And it's all interesting concepts to me that I would probably need to look into more, but think about how much energy or in this case. Mana is needed to summon something. And think about how much mana it would take to turn something into something else. Now what do you think is more likely?"

Anthony buried his face into his hands.

"So are you telling me that these goats used to be zombies? And that those zombies used to be dwarves?" Anthony said. "So somewhere inside of those goats there could be a part of the original dwarf?"

Valerie shook her head.

"I'm not sure. I have a hypothesis, which is a fancy word that Andrew tells me is like a theory."

"Do you want to go test your hypothesis?"

"How would we test that hypothesis?" Valerie said.

"If you were a dwarf who became a zombie and then turned into a goat, what would you want?" Anthony said.

"Beer probably."

"I mean besides the beer."

"More beer?" Valerie said, innocently.

"Valerie, we don't have any more beer. We've been on the road for weeks and we haven't really restocked. I was hoping that we'd get some from down there," Anthony said, waving in the general direction of the chaos of the day. "Also our gate person is taking a well deserved break right now, so no."

"All right. If we don't have any beer, what else do dwarves like to do."

"Valerie, you are a dwarf. What did you like to do?"

Valerie's cheeks heated up. Anthony raised an eyebrow.

"I like to read novels about fire inspectors," she said, narrowing her eyes.

"Oh that's awesome. That seems really niche. Do we have any of those novels around and we could read some to the goats?"

Valerie's voice caught in her throat when she began to speak.

"We er um...That is to say it's not the most appropriate thing for a mixed company?" Her sheepish tone matched with her looking away.

"Valerie, what the heck are you talking about? Speak plainly," Anthony said, putting his hands on his hips. He needed to get through to her and she was being evasive.

"Listen. I was a girl and a girl has needs and there's a very popular series about a fire inspector and it's very graphic about what he does. And yes it's meant for adults but every girl my age reads it. Or every girl did."

She let out a long sigh.

"Sorry about that. Maybe we could try talking to them?" Anthony said. "If they're with it, if they're lucid, then they'll respond. We could work out a system. Let's grab Song."

The pair wandered over to find the orcs conversing excitedly in hand talk. They were talking about loot if he had the signals correct.

Anthony showed the sign for wanting to butt into a conversation but not wanting to be rude. Song signed appreciation for his kindness.

Anthony signed back that they had a very important question for the pair and was wondering if they would mind coming along testing out a theory. More and more he was able to talk to both of them as if he had a basic understanding of hand talk. His ability was far short of Bobs but he was trying.

"I don't have a hand sign for theory. But we could use the hand sign for questioning if that works," Borgan said. "It'll be clear and we can have it pull double duty."

Song accepted that, nodding that he was going to go along with it. He was beaming.

Together the four of them approached one of the goats that were nearby in Gray's. For a quick second, Anthony wondered how he was going to be able to tell goats apart and then he realized that the female goats have others. This one had udders.

So they all crowded around trying to see if it would respond to them. It would acknowledge that they were there every so often it would look up. The lady goat would give them some side eye, then return to chewing.

"Hey, goat friend," Anthony said. "We want to be friends with you. If you would like to be friends with us then please nod or bleat or something. If you don't want to, you can let's say bleat twice. Does that sound good?"

The goat bleated once. It was that first sense Anthony had that it was actually paying attention to them and not just casually making fun of them in its head. The goat locked eyes with him, all of a sudden turning serious.

But then again he would probably mess with his rescuers, if he was in that situation. He thought about all the ways he could fuck with the people that were trying to help him. They were a myriad of ways in which goat Anthony would definitely fuck with the person Anthony.

He was newly excited with the opportunity to converse with a brand new species of enlightened. Down the list of what he would like to get across.

"Do you recall being a dwarf? Whether it was in a past life or not?" Anthony said

The goat bleated a single time.

"Do you recall becoming a zombie?" Anthony said.

The goat bleated twice. They were getting somewhere.

"Do you recall living in this port city by the quiet sea?" Borgan signed that he would like to butt into the conversation. Anthony waited for him to go ahead

"Do you recall your soul card?" he said. Once of the goat bleated yes he followed up with. "Do you still have your soul card?"

The goat bleated once, louder than before. Now they were getting somewhere and Anthony was understanding how important this discovery was going to become.

"Do you have an ability that you can use so that we can confirm that you understand us? Because if so this is incredible," Anthony said. "This changes so much."

The goat lift puzzled for a moment and then splinted. It was halfway between what was going to shit everywhere and or have a philosophical discussion about the meaning of life. Anthony would gladly accept a philosophical discussion with an actual goat.

He didn't think that wasn't the cards today but so many things had gone sideways that he was going to accept whatever happened. Then if the goat wanted to talk? They would talk. He would gladly give off a beer or two to a goat that used to be a dwarf. Especially if it has some good intelligence about what the heck had happened before. And then he realized that this had taken so much out of Sonya and he was going to have to ask her to do it again.

Anthony broke out into a cold sweat. If they could repeat this and save more zombies turning them into goats, this would change the course of the war. They just need to figure out a way to use this to their advantage.

There was just one thing holding him back. They had already asked so much of Sophie.

Her heart might not take it. She could turn some of the zombies into goats and thereby give them some semblance of returning to life. If he told her, then she would work herself to the bone converting as many as she could.

If he told her, she would surely wake up and demand to go into town and save as many as she could. Then she would sleep and immediately go back and do it again. He couldn't tell her.

Anthony paused. If he didn't tell her, then what? She would figure it out on her own? That was unlikely.

He couldn't tell her.

He sat down.

In the end it wasn't his choice to make for her. If she wanted to throw herself into it, she would. It was far too presumptive for him to make a decision on her behalf.

He would tell her.

He had to tell her. If he didn't she would know.

But most importantly, it wasn't his decision to make. He couldn't make this decision for her. Sophie had to choose her path and the chances were that they were going to be her for a while.

He was going to trust her. He had to. There was nothing there if they didn't trust each other. She was her own woman and this was on her.

He didn't even know if it would work. But he knew when he needed help. And he remembered that he had someone to help him with this kind of thing.

"Hey Valerie! I think that I'm going to need some help with something important," Anthony said.