It took several days for them to recover while they went through the dwarven lands. They needed it.
It wasn't until Anthony stopped jumping at every little sound that he realized that it had been going on for a while. Their group therapy sessions were starting to turn profit. Not in the gold variety but more in the we're all in this together and now is the time for us to become a team. He had them do a drill to train on if they were attacked by fast zombies several times. Stella called it exposure therapy and he didn't disagree.
Every other day, they sent Sonya back to get more supplies. After a while Finley got to be confident and decided to let their stores go slightly lower so they could hold more water. It was a change that they had not considered previously.
Water? Water was heavy.
One needed a lot of water for a Caravan of people. If there was no water to be found, generally it was because no one decided to live in a place exactly for that reason. Normally you were shit out of luck. There were no plumbing systems delivering water anywhere.
By this time, Sonya had gotten good enough with her anchors and Gates that she was able to keep a gate open for a minute. She couldn't make him any wider yet, but she knew that the gate spell would allow her to in conjunction with the anchor Card. It was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time and having the mana to do it. It also required having enough time to do some arcane ritual that Kara decided once her job.
Once again, Sonya was bitching about having to do somebody else's job on a foreign world just because there was nobody else qualified to do it.
Then finally they cleared the bluff and saw below them what they have been searching for for so long. The large inland port city lay below them. Though they were next to several well-to-do houses, the main parts of the city's physical plant rose up on the edge of the water, west of the promontory bluff, far closer to sea level.
Anthony and Finley were quite pleased to see several large boats still docked, and plans were made to acquire one.
So it was that they found themselves committing their very first act of piracy on the quiet sea.
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"All right. First things first," Anthony said, bringing the meeting to order. "Defenses? How are we doing with defenses?"
"All of our defenses are up and good, sir," Sonya said addressing the small counsel. "We have now set up an extensive network maze of tower defense along the way. Thanks to Andrew and his newly designed watchtower machine, we are able to automatically rain down fire on our enemies."
The eyes in the council shifted towards the dwarf. The male dwarf shrugged.
"What can I say, I learned a thing or two from Valerie," the artificer said. "They run off uncommon cards. It takes the card's magic and it uses it for something else. But it requires me to get mana from three or four of you guys to run one. Sonya had me put them along some of the larger corridors. So far Bob hasn't baited anything so we will need a live test. I think we are all excited for that."
There were some hoots and hollers at this. The entire Caravan had seen him creating the two meter tall contraptions. Somehow he was able to smuggle enough large phallic implements through Sonya's Gates. That had moved from his workshop at the academy to where they were currently holed up suspiciously easily.
Anthony had chalked that up to everyone being a little bit in their own business now that they were all getting ready for the next steps. Valerie had been a model accomplice.
"All right. Our defenses shall we say are secure?" Anthony said, turning to Bob.
"They are," Bob said.
"Then," Anthony said, ceding the floor to the ranger. "Let's go with the scouting reports next. Bob?"
Bob waved a hand at Valerie and behind him the prepared sheet on one of the wagons lit up. An effect of her card skill was to display a local map. They could easily see the city with its multiple residential and business districts. The roads connecting the interior connected with five highways leading into town through to the thirteen docks.
There was a little red blip on the map where all of them were situated. From where they were, they could see the city. The comparison between the two helped Bob explain the differences.
The rich dwarves of the port city of Gloucester, had seen fit to build along a promontory which they had taken full advantage of.
Those houses were massive mansions and with little fanfare, the team had dispatched any remaining zombies. There was one home owned by a human couple and one home that had been decorated by an elvish couple, but the rest were all dwarves. As the promontory jutted out like a peninsula, they cut it off using Sonya's Tower Defense maze to keep them safe.
This let them have a good area where the horses could roam and the only drawback was that instead of the promontory going down into beaches along its sides, it was surrounded by fjords. True, they were tall fjords but they were protected.
No one in their right mind wanted to fight up a fjord.
Another invasion was possible.
There was one tiny small beach on the very southernmost tip of the promontory where the fjords lead down to a beach and one of the first things that Sonya did was cut that off.
Bob rose, illustrating where he was going to take the scouts the next day. A packed city could be seen even from where they were. Masses of zombies continued to move around. Though there didn't seem to be going into the city proper with a spyglass, it was quite simple to see them going about their daily lives of lurching about looking for brains.
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"So you see here," Bob Said, "We will open the Kraken door in an attempt to get the zombies to flood westward away from us. This is of course after we checked it every other entrance was closed. If we are able to do that then we can start picking them off as they chase us to Wars Sonya's zone of death."
"I rather prefer the name the zone of death. Thank you very much, Bob," Sonya said.
"It's my pleasure, Miss Sonya," Bob said, bowing theatrically.
"So we caught the zombies west to east and tried to kill as many as we could before then," Anthony said. "That'll be phase one. Then we can see about sneaking in and stealing the ship or two. Supply?"
"I've done as you asked and attempted to get as much course canvas as possible. We have our doubts but we also have a willingness to try just about anything," Finley said.
"Are you ready for the test tomorrow then?" Stella yelled from the back.
"Yes, Stella, provided that you are the test subject," Finley said. "The basket is ready. We think it can hold two people and this will be a test of the canvas. We're doing what we want to do here. If nothing else, you'll have the regeneration card when you go up."
"Thank you!" Stella said. "That's all that I asked. And I don't need the cleanse card for this, but it'd be nice if someone was there standing by so that they can clean off any vomit."
There was a good chuckle from the crowd.
"All right, does anyone else want to have anything to add before we start?" Anthony said.
"We got this gov." Sophie yelled from the back. "Just a little in and out, steal a ship and turn it into a hot air balloon. Nothing that anyone has ever done before but we can do this."
There was another round of giggling. Sure. No one expected greatness but they had all worked for so long to get this opportunity to get off of land.
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Stella was at the forefront of the kite team. Sophie was sneaking around checking on the doors, she was doing her best to draw out any stragglers.
"All right! Final gate is done. Let's go," Bob said, his shirt a sweaty mess.
"No rush, Bob," Stella said. "I need to go up in the air balloon if possible and they're waiting on us."
"Are you afraid of heights now?" Sophie asked
"Not the heights I'm afraid of. It's the falling and hitting the ground part. Most of the ground," Stella said.
"Well, Bob will be there to catch you."
"Is that true? Bob?" Stella said, turning to give him the most adult case of puppy dog eyes she had ever given him.
"I mean how do I say this," Bob said. "I will be there. I do not promise to catch anyone. You volunteered for this. I will be holding the rope though so you can just zip line down as you do."
"Did you hear that Sophie? He said that I can zip line right into his heart!" Stella said.
"Well make sure that you don't hit his junk because that'll be painful."
"Hey!"
A few dwarven zombies lumbered out of the gate that Bob had left slightly ajar. Sophie, trying to move this along, started yelling insults to the zombies who presumably had not gotten the message or we're going to be heading out anytime soon.
"Hey you fuckers you zombies! Go get out here!" she yelled. "I don't have all day! I would like to see my friend up in a hot air balloon today so if you can move things along, that'll be fucking great."
"Yeah you lily-livered cowards," Stella yelled, chiming in. "Come and get it! Fresh human meat! Right here for the taking! Come right up!"
A few zombies stumbled through, but it sounded like it would be a while before they got end up to truly make it worthwhile to return back to the promontory. Sophie and Stella took turns taking them down.
After a while the trickle of zombies slowed and all three of them just sat around waiting for the next conga line of zombies.
"You don't think something happened right?" Sophie said. "Like they didn't like Mass on the boats and then take one of the boats to go across the seas or something like that? Because how far away are those death knights bob?"
"They're closer, or at least the one that would think is in the capital is closer, but it's it's not like we could just drive there and say hi. Heck, we're here just because you want to move faster. I mean we want to move faster. You can move as fast as you want Sophie."
"Well thank you so much Bob. I will take that advertisement." Sophie glared back at him.
Bob sagged in his saddle. Then he twisted around, trying to see if anything else was coming.
"You know what will be great?" Stella said. "If they were able to hear vibrations or something so that we could attract them just by stomping our feet. You would think in a town or city of this size that there would be some by the gates, but after they're walking all over, there's only so many places that there's always could be."
"Do you think that the zombies found a shelling point somewhere," Sophie said. "Some place where they're all attracted to when they all decided they wanted to be there? Like maybe there's like a dungeon in the center of the city and they all kind of fell down at it because the jailers left it open or something like that."
"I love how you just jump to a dungeon in the city?' Stella said. 'Because it shows where you're thinking. And I'm thinking that maybe there weren't so many people into whips and chains in this small Port City. But who knows because you know a port in every storm and all that?'
"What are you both on about?" Bob said.
"Oh Stella is telling me how she wants you to get this brown leather riding crop and-"
"I had said nothing to the sort," Stella said. "Bob, we'll Talk later about that specifically. But what Sophie is saying is that we think that the zombies might have all congregated in one spot and got him stuck there. Like if there was a well or a dungeon inside the center of the city. And say the well was open or the dungeon was open because we've already established that zombies can't do stairs well. So it makes sense that they would go from the highest level down to the bottom if they were in a place where the doors were open."
"What's this about a dungeon? Sophie, I thought I told you that I am in a committed relationship with Stella. Now, if you have some implements that you want to lend us, that's another thing," Bob said, winking at Stella. "But really... a dungeon?"
"When I say dungeon," Sophie said, "Do you both jump to sex dungeon? Because that's not what I was talking about at all."
"Are you talking about a place where people can go in and quest and find loot and stuff? That's like a catacombs or something like that. We all know that dungeons just mean sex stuff," Stella said.
"I swear to you, Bob said we did not want to expose you to any of our sex stuff. But if you want to drag us into discussion then I can go over the finer points of-"
"That'll be completely unnecessary Bob. Thank you so much Sophie, let’s never speak about that again."
"I don't think that's how it works, Sophie, but noted," Bob said
Sophie pretended to throw up for about five seconds while the next batch of zombies arrived.
"Gas light, gate keep, grill boss," Stella said, aiming for the first one.