A lot of people wanted to talk to the girl. Anthony was determined to let her be. The entire caravan understood his position and spent parts of the evening trying to get information from him instead.

Anthony relieved Sophie of her scouting duties, putting one of the warriors in her place on standby if the scouts needed to head out. They didn't at the moment, which was how Anthony and Sonya ended up eating dinner outside of the field hospital.

"It kind of feels like the world hates us right now, doesn't it?" Sonya said. "Like I understand, we're here to solve a problem and kill some death knights but it would be nice to find someone alive more often. Two weeks and we have only found three people?"

The days had felt like months. Now? They'd gone into a rhythm. Rather than spending every bit of their day just surviving, they were able to venture out and help others. If they were others to help, which based on their experience there wasn't.

"Sometimes I think this is a cruel joke but," Anthony said, squeezing her hand. "At least I'm not alone."

Her presence next to him was comforting. He hadn't counted on that. But it was good to have.

He had done nursing school and all those little talks they had about resiliency and mental toughness and all that shit had gone out the window when he came here. He might be tough, but he was only one man working his way across the continent that he was not familiar with.

"We're not alone. We made a little community here and we all pitched in. This might not be the most ideal situation but we can take it on together," Sonya said, really leaning into him.

He was glad for how close they were.

"It's too bad we don't have anything to watch. I could think up a game we can play but so far? In our downtime? There hasn't been much to do."

"Maybe the new one will have an idea," Sonya said.

"Oh! How's the new patron working out for you?" Anthony said, resting his head on her.

Their vantage point next to the field hospital let them see the fire in the center. It's flames flickered.

"He doesn't speak much. That would be ideal if I was looking for a one night stand but..."

"Being a magical sugar baby isn't exactly a one night stand?"

"It's more of a situationship. Or two air elementals who both want to get together?"

"What are you trying to say?" Anthony said.

"An airship?"

He groaned. She had got him right in the dad joke.

"You know what, I think Borgan and Song said that they would play some music for us. They do need to practice to keep their chops up. We could make it a date if you want." She looked over at him hopefully.

"That sounds lovely. We can make that happen. Finley said that part of being a tinker is learning their stories and that he has a few that he would love to tell us," Anthony said.

He hadn't noticed until that moment but he really hadn't been looking forward to something in a while. He was happy when the day was done and he could spend time with Sonya.

"I haven't really thought about how much I appreciate you. Like, I look forward to seeing you everyday, but outside of that? I think I have been a bit nose to the grindstone on this adventure. The gods that pulled us here to do this work, they didn't specify a timetable and yeah I think that this might take a while. The more we travel, the larger this continent seems."

"What did Finley say about the inland sea? It's three weeks of hard driving away?" Sonya said.

"And like two weeks until winter, but we have been continuously going south until now. Maybe we need to pick up and move more," He said

"And even then if Bob didn't know where the other death knights were we would literally be going in blind. It's hundreds of miles between here and there. You know what we need to do is try and get some real measurements. Triangulate the distance of the other two. That would be useful."

Anthony nodded. He had been wishing for that kind of information for a while. His best guess was that the entire continent had to be at least one thousand miles long until they could get to a seaport. This ran into the issue then of them not having another destination if they ever got a ship. They also severely lacked nautical training but it was either that or fight the more and more zombies as the death knights found their trail.

"Do you think that any of the zombies from the other legions would try to find us?" Anthony said. "Like say that the one we just killed had a unique transportation power and the other ones have different skills, probably something far worse- do you think that they would come after us or just sit in their little fortified ivory towers?"

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Sonya leaned in. Perhaps she was considering his words?

"I don't know about that but that power?" She said.

"You didn't."

"I did."

"Well that makes sense. No one else could have grabbed it from a rock tomb," Anthony said. "How does it work?"

"I have to fully visualize two places that I have been and then connect them in my mind, expend a bunch of mana and then, man is that a banana in your pocket or are you just happy that I worked out portals?"

Anthony grinned.

"I could kiss you," he said.

"Please do," she replied, sinking into his embrace.

When they came up for air a short while later both were pleasantly flustered.

"Maybe we should ..."

Sophie opened the tent flaps, cutting into their alone time.

"Sorry to bother you both. She's awake. We've been talking and I think I need to bring you and Andrew. Sonya, do you also want to come in? She's got a lot going on and I don't know that we're going to be able to help her the way that she needs to be helped today."

"Of course," Sonya said. "She is okay with both of us coming in?"

"I explained that Anthony was a nurse and that you were a mental health counselor before and she didn't seem to understand the second one, but she definitely knows what a nurse is and she's willing to talk. Joe, let's all have a little talk. She's scared she's alone. She just lost her parents and just about everyone she's ever loved. Sounds familiar?"

"Pretty familiar," Anthony said, opening the tent flap fully to allow Sonya to enter.

Inside the torch lit room, four chairs and a single table stood tall. A young dwarf girl with blonde hair looked at both of them. The dark bags under her eyes had to happen there for a while. She stared at first. Sonya, then Anthony, lingering on both. Satisfied, she waved them in. Anthony was the last one in and they both took a seat across the girl.

"First off, I'd like to say that we are so sorry for what you've been through and we are going to do everything we can to ensure that you stay safe. With that said, my name is Anthony and I am unfortunately the leader of this caravan. I don't know if Ms. Sophie has said anything about why we're here, but with three exceptions. Everyone in the Caravan is one of the chosen and we were all summoned here when this mess," he said gesturing to the area around them. "Began and destroyed all of our former lives."

"Valerie Underfoot of the Heirisburg underfoot clan," she said. " To be honest I had sort of given up and when Miss Sophie found me I don't know what I was going to do. I might have still had food and water but...but...my parents."

Sophie tucked out for a second. Anthony was nearly certain that she was getting food for the poor girl.

"Valerie, We understand that you lost a lot. Your entire city was overrun. We're not sure if we found your parents or not and basically everything that lived on this continent before, every enlightened being died. You can take as long as you need to do whatever you want here. Consider this your safe space. When you're ready, we're going to reintroduce you to the rest of the Caravan. Our intent," she said, looking to Anthony for confirmation. "I'm not sure if you'll be comfortable with us by then, but we should be here for 3 or 4 days."

Valerie's eyes went wide. This was a lot for her to take it once and when Sophie came back with the stew and handed it to her. She ate in silence.

Anthony once again found himself waiting for a dwarf to finish a meal. After this he would do a little debrief with Bob. She might not know a lot, but she had gone through the thick of it.

Twenty minutes and two more bowls of soup later and they finally got a little bit more out of her.

She was a daughter of an adjunct faculty member at the noble war college. That war college was one of the main reasons that people lived here. When her father had realized something was going on, he had grabbed a card and shoved it into her soul deck. It was a heirloom card passed out from a few generations and it gave her powers that she was not familiar with.

Of course, Anthony had to ask about the card and it turned out that her great-grandfather had been a military strategist and he had passed the card on to her father and before everything went down he had passed it on to her.

"The sad part is he did all his work. Try and save me and then he looked like he was actually going to turn at that point. He shoved me into the trap door and I was down there ever since. I don't know how long it was but it felt like it's been months."

"It was at most two weeks," Anthony said.

She blanched at that statement. It sounded like they've been a lot in common except for being alive where they were at that time. Anthony was very very curious about his card but that could wait. They needed to help her out first before they admitted anything from her. She had been ravenous and he was certainly happy that they had made as much soup as possible already.

Valerie had a somewhat useless soul card that she didn't want to talk about. What she did want to talk about were all the little battle plans that her father had explained to her as youth. She had really listened into those, expecting to become a master strategist when she got older. Later, she had expressed a desire to go to the academy and he had just broken down.

He hadn't wanted his daughter to study war.

"My mom ran interference when I applied because he did not really want me to go there. I wanted to go there. I would have done a lot to go to the school that my father taught it but things happened," Valerie said.

This close up, she wasn't that different from a human. He started to wonder if he could treat the way that he treated his other children. The proportions were close, but she had lacking height.

"And now I really hate to ask this, but since we're here, we have been slowly getting all the zombies outside the city, funneling them into a kill zone and harvesting their cards. Cards. Do you think that you would want to help us fight and kill some zombies? I understand that just about every zombie that we encounter used to be a dwarf, but the Goat Lord and Yil work in mysterious ways."

"What you want to know about the city? I grew up here so..."

"First? Card shops to raid. We're looking for combat and utility cards. We need armor and weapons, especially crossbow bolts. We need to outfit our guys. I have been using a ceremonial spear that I grabbed for my Tinker friend. I would like something more designed for war."

"There's an armory at the War college. You should be able to raid it so long as we can break down some of the locks. That won't be so difficult. I can even help find a place for us with some food or spices. If you're going to be going away from here, that would be useful."

Anthony's sigh of relief was felt by everyone in their room. With her little bit of Intel, they would easily be able to find and salvage the parts of the city that were most useful.

It was when she projected an accurate image of the town over one of their walls that they found out exactly how strong she was. Anthony smiled at the exacting detail.

This would come in handy.