Fear held her. The feeling that even the shadows were watching itched at her subconscious. Her heart raced, like a delivery driver looking for a tip.

Sophie methodically cleared the rooms of the second mansion, this time alternating between being the point woman with Stella. This mansion hadn't had any zombies and when they reached the open front door, they figured out why.

"If there were zombies here, they left out here," Bob said, dropping to one knee.

He was clearly doing something. It was also just as clear that he could be pretending to be doing something. Men were like that sometimes. Especially Bob because he kept trying to impress Stella. Not that he had to. Stella seemed plenty impressed by him. Sophie liked Bob enough but was a jumble of emotions since being freed.

No one expects to be caged up. Sitting there expecting to die at any time, hope was the only thing she had. She has been captured and shoved into the cage. Before she even got her bearings, or was able to fight back, she'd been hog tied. Her captors hadn't cared it she was able to break out.

Stella had untied her.

Sophie checked the room again. It was empty. This had been a rich dwarfs house. There had to be something useful. Or at least some food. Constant low-level hunger was now normal. She wasn't thirsty, but she could eat.

Stella too was looking around for food.

"Kitchen is by the back door so why don't we swing back that way? Once we clear the next floor?" Stella said.

"Do you think it's harder for them to climb up or climb down stairs?" Sophie asked.

There was one more floor to go. None of them had heard anything thus far. She began to walk up the large ornate wooden staircase when her evasion skill told her to move. That her rogue skill was trying to tell her to move felt entirely different than it had.

She pulled away just avoiding a dropping zombie. Whatever intelligence governed the zombie hadn't thought about how dropping from a height would affect it. Both arms broke upon contact with the floor. The zombie dwarf had not been drinking it's milk.

Standing up with two useless arms the zombie was immediately eviscerated by three magically formed daggers.

Sophie and Stella stepped back, moving away from the second floor balcony. Bob was halfway up the stairs before he realized something had happened.

"You girls okay back there?"

"Peachy!" Stella said.

"Just fine, boss!" Sophie said. "But you might want to dodge about now?"

Bob looked up, rather than doing because of course he did. Being an idiot was just a part of life. At least it looked like that for him.

A second zombie tumbled down to where he was. Bob deflected the zombie down the stairs towards them.

"Hey Bob."

*Stab. Stab.*

"Yeah, Stella?"

*Stab. Stab.*

"Fucking move."

Sophie sighed.

"Oh, yes. That would make sense," Bob said, running down the stairs.

Two more formerly living dwarves made their appearance, where Bob had been.

"You gotta stop making these parties open invite Bob," Stella said, stabbing forward. "Were you on the guest list, sir? I guess not."

"I don't know if they're male or female. They still have beards!" Sophie said.

Sophie concentrated on her elemental magic, striking the second with and electric bolt. He or she stammered a bit and then fell to Bob's blows. When it fell, it was apparent that there had been a skirt of sorts, so maybe she? Sophie didn't want to misgender a dead zombie.

In their course of instruction, Finley had told her several things about his god. The goat lord abhorred this kind of death above all else, and commanded his followers to grow sunflowers or yellow daisies at the site where bodies were laid to rest. Once they were done, she considered dragging the corpses to the outside so he could say his rites. She might take it up herself if there had been a perk associated with it.

All three of them paused, waiting for another attack. Of course they never came when they were expected, but that was the norm. After nearly a minute of waiting, Bob took the stairs two at a time. He face planted on the first landing where it split in two. Dwarven stairs were not designed with tall men in mind.

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When he got up, he glared at the stairs as if they had done this to him personally. Sophie followed at a more sedate pace. She wasn't fully dallying but she wasn't going to be rushed. Stella waited till her partner was clear up onto the landing before moving. Stella, clearly lolly gagging, could take all the time that she wanted.

The itch of the upcoming reconnaissance mission into town needed to be scratched. That speedster card sounded like it would be a good addition to her kit as well if she could get Finley to pass it over.

From the landing, they could see the broken guardrail that each of the dwarf zombies would have had to slip over. They moved. No more zombies waited for them.

Apart from a room with several cards that were sent to her heart to inspect, they cleared the final floor quickly. It helped that any of the potential zombies had decided to go skydiving. Once the were certain that they were empty, Bob summoned his Eldritch companion. It went to town on the dead zombies, giving them even more loot to bring back to the caravan.

The cat shaped beast once again draw cards and card pieces out of the bodies. This time, Bob had the foresight to put a sack in front of it when it horked up the card pieces. This would have been quite tedious without Ca'at.

However, one or two cards off the top, that couldn't hurt could it? She could see Bob wrestling with the idea. All that mattered to Sophie was living to the next day and the day beyond that as well. If he offered, she might take him up on it.

"Let's get back to the guys," Bob said, "Sophie, are you okay?"

The concern in his voice snapped her out of it. She was definitely going to talk to Finley about the goat lord after this. Shit had begun to get weird.

---

"Alright, another base speed card and what has to have been four soul cards, all good finds. These dwarven cards seem pretty specialized in cooking the books. I hadn't even heard of an accountant class. But seeing as how it's an uncommon, I could see people using it more often," Finley said, back at the yard of their first mansion.

"Finley, I almost got hit by a zombie. One of these ten is a dodge skill. I want to use that as part of my kit for this mission and give the two speed cards to Stella and Sophie. I assume we'll be taking one of the monks with us?" Bob said, turning to Anthony.

Anthony nodded. "Brandon said that he would like to and yes he has a speed enhancement as a part of his class. He'll be your backup. He volunteered -he wasn't recruited. We'll have eleven people left here. I'm going to change the meetup spot. If you guys are good with that, this will be our primary meetup point, rather than south of town. If we need to pull out, we'll head back to the way station. For this reason, we wanted you to think about how we could communicate over long distances."

"Ah yeah. Maybe there's some magic spell? Sophie has elemental magic now, can that help?"

Bob looked at them, trying to gauge if they had come up with anything. He took a deep breath, inhaling a lung full of jerky. Anthony had several bits of jerky in his beard. He wasn't mad. For the first time since coming to this place, he was full. He also felt like he was busy. More importantly, he was accomplishing something. Even if he wasn't the man in the arena, there was something noble about getting the entire Caravan to safety. The entire Caravan was his home now.

"Oh and good news," Anthony said, " it looks like we'll be able to get a third wagon up and running soon. Especially if the carriage house behind that mansion unlocks anytime soon."

"You're not worried about any potential zombies behind the door?"

The carriage house itself was a good walk behind the mansion they just cleared. Bob had noted in his report that it was locked. They didn't want to approach it. After clearing the house, they tried to get this much as possible from a distance. It wasn't much.

"Not really. Sonya is going to take the other two monks over with her once you're good and within the city of Plainsmount proper," Anthony said. "Also Finley, you said something about deck boxes?"

"They were pretty common. I haven't seen any on a dwarf though. I mean the dead ones. They let you slot cards that you don't want to put into your soul deck into a place where you can use them. This is mine."

Finley held up a small box. It was custom made to hold several dozen cards at the minimum. He then mimed putting a card in.

"You're limited on how many cards you can have in your soul. You can increase that limit over time. Unless you're mentally strong, that won't happen. It hurts to take out cards from your soul if they're close to the max level. It hurts but it's doable. I wouldn't."

"Someday, you're going to tell me everything there is to know about cards. That day is not today, but soon," Anthony said.

"Oh Bob? If you see a little encyclopedia about cards, do go and grab it for us," Finley said," We're going to need something like that. And it can't hurt to have one."

Finley was already thinking about how much space it would take up. In the back of his mind, he could feel his two storage skills working together. There wasn't a lot of room for books. But he would make do. He always did.

---

Zan watched as the recon team left. And in their wake they left several dozen card pieces.

Finley had promised her that she would get the first shot at creating a card. With two frames, he could now do a side-by-side with her. Something about her class, the wizard class, made making cards better in some way. She wasn't sure how. But Finley was raving about how much easier it would be for her to do the same thing that he had done.

She just accepted it.

There was nothing you could do about when the elf got enthusiastic. So when all of her busy work was done, of course she went to find him. Once they were together, they set up a working area.

Side by side, they slotted pieces into each one.

"I can see there's room for six pieces here? What do we do if we only have five pieces?

"You connect them with your mana. Watch."

The elf poured mana out of his hand. It looked like steam gathering to drop down. Then the mana condensed, forming around the five cards he'd placed there. Then he connected all five pieces. For a brief moment, the iron glinted. Sonya set down her work.

As he applied his mana, the card took shape. The pieces had been iron. They stayed iron, as it became an uncommon card. Sonya closed her mouth. She never wanted to make someone uncomfortable. This extended to being shocked or surprised.

"There you go. Now go ahead, and take your time."

Sonya concentrated. She could feel pearls of mana. Andrew had explained how to do it. He had a feel for the mana of others. His whole class was built about that. She slowly and methodically placed five card pieces into her frame. Then just as she did so, she used that mana to join the pieces together.

The effect was far faster than she expected. Before she knew it she was nearly done filling out the frame. Then, she saw the first card she'd ever made.