"It's simple, Gigi," the elf said. "Our world domination plan begins with controlling the air shipping industry. Oh sure, there's no air shipping industry yet, but imagine the possibilities."

The goat bleated, inauspiciously.

Next to them a small magic made pond held a single large seaworthy ship. The area around it was an artificer's dream. Tall magically enhanced earthen walls surrounded the lake itself, cutting it off from any rivers or tributaries.

"They just need to get those balloon sails correct."

The large ship had many lengths of canvas arrayed around it as a team of orcs and humans attempted to sew them into any configuration that worked. This would be the third iteration of the artificer's master plan.

One of the human mages blew heated air into the canvas, attempting to make it move somewhere other than into the down position. It began to fill, for the first time holding the heated air. It resembled a bag finally being filled with the vegetables that one's wife made one buy but that never made it out of the freezer.

The elf, Finley, was glad for the ice magic that had brought the idea of a mobile freezer to his caravan. His caravan had grown recently, with the addition of more than a dozen humans, two orcs and two dwarves. This didn't even take into account the herds of both horses and goats and the three new wagons, two of them covered.

All in all it would have been a tough group to feed on an ongoing basis. However, due to extenuating circumstances turning the the entirety of the four races into zombies, they had found enough food through salvage.

At some point, they were going to run out of food, but it hadn't gotten to that point yet. If they played their cards right, it wouldn't. But in this economy, there was no money in it.

"Ready to try out some magic, Gigi?" Finley said.

The goat bleated.

Finley held out a card.

Uncommon Skill Card: Air Bending Level 1

This allows the user to control many aspects of the wind and air around themselves.

He pressed it into the pygmy goat's stomach, watching as she willed its absorption.

"Try and blow the balloon up," he said. "But don't make it obvious."

Daisy bleated acceptance. He knew that she had another card but he didn't know the particulars. And it wasn't like she could easily tell him. Their back and forth more like the exchanges of several humans caught in the act of trying to mate. Minus the mating part of course.

The goat changed the position of her legs, making herself lower and more stable. Then she did a little jig and a gust of wind passed both of them, moving into the open aperture of the balloon. It didn't take much to give it a bit of a stir. Suddenly, all the humans working on the project took notice of the little goat with the big heart. Finley smiled, patting the goat.

"Now, you have their attention. Make it count."

For the first time, the canvas balloon sack was nearly full. The goat, using her new card power pushed it to its limits. This was the first of the tests that it passed.

There was a lot of cheering as the balloon finally went up. That was about the time that the crew realized they probably needed to get it tied down a little bit better. Finley watched as it threatened to keep going up without any counterweight.

One of the humans, a bald man with a ranger cloak shot out a grappling hook, holding and pulling it with all of his might.

He quickly went skyward and was summarily grabbed on the legs by a chain of humans until one of the orcs held them all down.

This gave the Daisy the opportunity of a lifetime to do the right thing. At least, Finley thought she would do the right thing. It was an option that he would have to mentor a goat into becoming a mage.

It took a little bit of time, but eventually the balloon got under control and all the humans returned to the ground, to call it a day just as they were getting going.

Before they decided to leave, they tied that balloon up tight.

Several ropes came out around it connecting to some of the heavy counterweights that they had assembled, most of them rocks. There was no shame in tying one's self to a rock so that one would not fly away. There was a shame in not recognizing that one needed to be tied to a rock. After all, the air ship's engineer was going to have to figure out how to navigate with this thing.

Finley hadn't had the slightest idea of how he was going to make it work but he was known for getting more done with less.

"That'll do, Gigi."

She nuzzled against him. If she was still as he assumed a fully grown dwarf woman, this would have been weird. But she was not.

She was a pygmy goat who used to have been a dwarf. Of course, in between those two things, she had been turned into a zombie so he wasn't exactly certain how much of her previous life she remembered.

Finley himself only remembered the few decades he had been alive as a tinker. There was a before time when he was a Spore before he had taken up for his elf body that he didn't remember so well.

It was the reason that he was hoping that he could make another druid class card to give to her. Because the class card will give her the ability to wild shape into another form.

That was his best hope to getting the dwarves back to the way that they were before. Having them wild shape from their current form into their original form was a fix that might be a permanent one. He wasn't entirely sure.

Finally didn't know how long pygmy goats lived, but he didn't think it was, however long dwarves lived.

He hoped that Gigi would have a nice long life, working with him. She might help him run the air shipping business. He really thought that she would have liked it.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Turning around, they headed back up the hill towards a raised promontory over the quiet sea.

A series of raised earthen walls made a maze for the attacking zombies that came by every so often to try and eat them.

Of course of the Maze had a ladder by its entrance.

One of the humans guarded the front of the maze. A monk named Brandon lowered down the ladder so the goat could get up and she quickly followed by Finley.

"Did you see what she did?" Brandon said.

"That air bending card made it work for the first time," Finley said. "I thought it was going to be worthless, I was wrong. I was so wrong."

"Pay up."

Finley grumbled pulling out a few card pieces from his pocket. He brought out at six copper pieces and handed them to the bald smiling man.

"It's been a pleasure doing business with you kind elf," Brandon said. "I'm always willing to bet against the house."

Finally didn't mind losing a few card pieces. With those six, he would be able to make another card.

It took them about ten minutes to weave around the area above the maze to get back to their staging area.

The air bending card had been one of the newest cards he made. It had also been a card he had never seen before or heard of.

There were only so many common cards. Many people had common abilities from those common cards and there are a lot that you would just see very often.

Uncommon cards were more varied by their nature and often very specific. However this new card he had made had been far afield of any of the previous cards he had made. He had never heard of air bending before. He had asked the some of the humans and they had said 'Oh yeah, that makes sense.'

It came from their pop culture.

Then they had to explain what pop culture was and he was thoroughly amused. Something that they had brought to his world had affected the card that he had made. Just the idea had made it across.

This was very unexpected and it was the first uncommon card that he had fully not intended to make.

He pulled out his slate, sliding several card pieces in there.

Gigi watched with rapt attention. He put six pieces in there, sliding them and trying to put his will and power into it.

A lot of making a card with his slate was impressing it with the will and guiding the card to becoming what he wanted it to be. He couldn't always make the card that he wanted but he could get close most of the time. He was getting very good at making common cards that he could combine into more advanced cards, usually class cards in this case. But this time, he was going to try to make the same uncommon card that he had made before.

He took one palm, squeezing mana into the slate. On their own, the six pieces didn't take up the entirety of this slate. The slate was a mechanical frame, around the size of a book, with a card sized indent. Mana that he dropped into it turned into a physical liquid that sloshed around it until it settled.

He dripped intent with his mana.

He had seen the power of that single card in use now. He wanted to make a second one. If he could consistently make the same card over and over again his job would be so much easier. Or at least parts of his job would be. There was no economy to speak of as all trade went through him.

This was great for his bartering skill but terrible for any other reason.

It was part of the reason why he had worked up a system of rewarding people for their contributions in the caravan and making betting pools on various things. His latest bet with Brandon had been a twofer, combining the usability of the air bending card with the reality that nobody knew if goats could use the new cards in their soul decks.

He was pretty sure that they could. He was also reasonably sure that they still had the soul deck cards from when they were undead.

Some of the goats that were there had previously been orcs and some had previously been dwarves. Both enlightened species were born with a card in their soul decks. It's to reason that if they were trained a zombie they would keep their Soul cards. What they had found out after killing so many zombies is that those zombies had cards inside of their soul decks as well. Some of the zombies had larger decks that they were able to harvest.

Taking cards from someone's Soul deck was always a fraud thing as the cards didn't just pile themselves up on top of the person's chest when they died. That would have been lovely and easy but there had to be a little bit of digging in where to get them out. Bob, the leader of the scouts in the Caravan had a special summon they let cut cards out of the zombies that they found.

Finley was super jealous and hoping that someday Daisy would be able to grow sharp hooves that she could do the same thing. Regarding the pygmy goat, he considered whether she would even want to do something like that. She looked really cute, but was also probably pretty ferocious. That was of course, when she wasn't chewing on grass. When she chewed on grass, she could make any farmer's wife's heart melt.

The farmer would have fully melted at the cuteness.

He thought about how the card worked for the goat as he finished putting mana into it. Then the frame took a seconds to create a card, The motto and the card pieces joined together. Creating one solid object, the frame held it in face and just like that, the words popped up over it and the drawing of a monk moving air around with his arm has appeared in the iron card.

He smiled, holding it up. It was about the best gift that he could ask for. Being able to zoom in on a specific card that he wanted to do with such a clarity had helped him produce the same card twice.

Even though it was uncommon, he was going to have to go through and take as many card pieces as he could spare, doing the same experiments. He was going to try to replicate the same card over and over again. What he was looking for was repeatability. Some of the card masters in their books had written about being able to create the same card a few times in a row.

Finley had been able to do it with common cards.

This was the first second uncommon he had ever made. There was so many uncommon cards that he would never see all of them in his life. There were far fewer common cards, with an estimated between three and four hundred different common cards.

With all the card pieces that he had, he was going to have to hustle to making more cards to meet the demand. The herd of goats had been an interesting boost to their numbers. The Caravan was trying to get them to do some of the work around the staging area. Part of that was giving them extra cards so they could be the security force.

There was still a lot of zombies left.

There was a large canal that split the city into that dividing the burnt out western side from the still strong eastern side. Undead on the eastern side to the city, the only living zombies around were making their way up to the long earth maze that one of the caravan's casters had created.

Finley patted the goat again on her head. She lean into him as he inspected the card once again. Now that he had two of the same card, who would benefit from the second one?

The fact that he was not able to make this meant that he could probably do it a third time. Finley, not one to rest on his laurels for too long, brought out more card pieces and tested his theory again.

Five minutes later, he happily held up a third copy of the same card. A grin spread across his face as he could no longer contain it.

With his ability to make the same new cards reliably set, he was going to do something else difficult. When he had told people about the air bending card that morning, they had asked if he could make an earth, fire or water bending card. He was surprised at the questions but said he said that he would give it a shot later that day.

Now was the time. His friend Anthony, the Caravan Commander, had given him a brief description of how these things would work. So what when he sat down to do this he would be able to visualize it.

He imagined how the skill would work.

It took a minute to focus on his will and intent pushing it back into the frame as he put six more iron card pieces into it. He poured mana into it from his hand, and deposited his pure will into the frame.

Uncommon Skill Card: Water Bending Level 1

This allows the user to control many aspects of the water around themselves.

He was immensely pleased to have created a thing that was a figment of his imagination a whole lot of time. He had made water-aspected caster cards before, but this was a specific card that his friends had told him should exist. If one of the other cards existed. He did not want to tell them no, and now he had won another bet against Brandon.

He was excited to tell him.

That would definitely help with his work on getting his barter and appraisal score better.

Finley held it up, watching us the image of a man surfing on a wave dominated it. This was going to be a very good day indeed.