Finley held out his favorite bowl to receive a steaming breakfast. Stella had surprised the group in the morning with yet another pot of stew. The early risers looked at her with some skepticism.

"Look, it's a new recipe. I added more spices and this should taste hopefully like it isn't the same thing we just had multiple times. Dwarves were apparently bigger on alcohol than food," she said.

"It's good guys," Finley said, hungry enough that anything would taste good.

"Finley, I'm beginning to think that you don't have a sense of taste or smell," Brandon said. "That or maybe you never had one. Do elves have a different set of senses?"

"I can assure you that isn't the case. Stella made it better this time, I swear."

Finley, first to try a new take on the same food, readily ate what was available, taking his time to savor the starchy taste of the potatoes. Stella's ice powers had been fine-tuned enough for her to do real cryomancy and it showed. The potatoes tasted fresh despite him knowing that they weren't. There was something about her ability to take a frozen potato and then just remove the coldness from it prior to cooking it.

Before she had begun cooking, Stella had done a cursory inventory of their stock and handed the results to Finley. He examined the inventory list as he ate.

He was highly ambivalent about the results. His accountant class processed the inventory and spat out one hundred and twenty days of supply.

That was long. Longer than he thought it would be. He would have to think about how useful the skills were because he was unaccustomed to that immediate calculation.

They would have enough food to last four months. That was an excellent starting place. His main problem was the lack of variety. They had eaten so many potato dishes that even Finley was growing to disdain the thought of them. Once this was all over he vowed that he would abstain from potatoes. He would eat anything but potatoes. That vow warmed him almost as much as the stew.

"If you don't like the variety, we can go hunting," Bob said. "There is nothing wrong with Stella's cooking that anyone should be complaining about. Wild game would just add more to the cook time."

"It would be difficult to hunt right now, especially since we wouldn't want you to be far from the rest of us," Finley said.

"Then there is a strange and terrible possibility of zombie yaks and wolves," Stella said.

"The offer is on the table," Bob said. "There is always the possibility of zombie yaks. We just need to hedge our bets. I wonder if yaks can be turned?"

"I don't want to even know the answer to that," Stella said.

"It's possible," Finley said, rubbing his stubble.

"Well that's another fear unlocked," Stella said. She placed a ladle of stew into Bob's bowl.

Bob promised that he would float the idea to Anthony when he woke up. By an unspoken agreement they had all let him sleep in today.

Finley took that morning to really check on the horses. He spent an hour going around using a combination of his animal handling and medicine skills to make sure that each one of them was fit for duty. Horses fed, he checked on their water situation. The barrel designated for their use was centrally located and half empty.

He hadn't expected much. The horses felt well rested. They had not grown up as tinker animals, but had readily accepted the attention. His two bay mares were ecstatic to be a part of a larger herd, something that he hadn't anticipated. The horses seemed to be more social than the humans. Already he could see a few cliques beginning to form. This was especially true for Bob, Stella and Sophie.

He watched the horses play around for a few minutes. Their joyful games encompassed most of the camp. It made him forget their dire situation for a time. They chased each other back and forth inside of the walls.

Satisfied, he returned to the cook fire. The crew had shifted around but it was clear that at least half of the camp would be taking an early lunch together.

Stella broke out the brew that they had gotten earlier. She motioned, asking for his help to tap the barrel, which he nodded his ascent. He found a row of unoccupied bed rolls on his way to grab the implements before returning.

Had most of the camp woken up? Many of the people he expected to see sleeping were already up on the walls or out of his sight. He handed Stella the tap and went to find his mug. One beer would serve to lubricate his joints for the work that day, what little they had to do. Without an imminent threat to their lives, some of them were choosing to take some personal time.

Finley had never drank beer for breakfast before. It was a pleasant, completely unexpected taste. Stella knew her way around a tap suspiciously well. The remaining foam was just a thin layer on top of his mug, the mark of a good pour in dwarven beer.

"Thanks for this," he said.

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"Cheers," she said, clinking her mug against his.

Finley appreciated the foresight of a woman who wanted to start the day with a cold beer.

Dwarven beer steins, unlike their clothing, were far larger than they needed to be. If it weren't for the handle, the stein would be unwieldy to the extreme. Thankfully, dwarven stein makers thought to take in the penchant for drunks to need a strong grip.

If the watch out in the wall was correct then there was no sign of the undead legion. The Horde was on the march nearby them. Anthony had asked Bob to take several measurements to try and ascertain if the death knight closest to them had continued onward or was returning to where it started from. Bob had taken the time to draw a circle at every corner of the compound, placing approximate azimuths for each one. Each circle had five rocks, one painted white.

Fortune, or perhaps the goat lord saw fit to give them zero help. They were all pointing in the same direction. At lunchtime Anthony would ask Bob to do the same thing again. Then they would have to fit into proof if it was moving. That is, unless it was moving directly towards them. That was one of the blind spots that they had. They could judge the direction but not the distance unless it got within range. Bob's pathfinder range skill gave them a security cushion, provided he was awake.

It felt like they had tried everything to determine the distance. Several people had volunteered to scour the cards remaining later that day to try and find anything helpful.

There didn't seem to be a way out of this without conflict. It weighed heavily on Finley. No matter what he did, at least one death knight stood between them and their next goal. Their paths would take them crashing together. What he did not want to do was to leave it up to the death night to set up his own ambush somewhere remote.

He knew that Anthony wanted to fight the death knight at a place in time of his choosing. Stupid humans and their notions of vengeance or equity. You couldn't get revenge as a dead man. Elves took the long term view of things.

When Stella had her second drink, Finley wanted to say something. There was only so much to go around after all. Several kegs had been found inside of the town but most were not serviceable. The small keg that they tapped would surely be enough for everyone to have one, and there would be people who would abstain.

Finley decided that he didn't want to have a second. For now at least.

After Stella had her third drink, Finley kept a closer watch on her. It wouldn't do to have his cryomancer and head cook out of the picture by the time lunch rolled about. He was no stranger to preparing his own food. He would not have minded cooking for everyone if someone else hadn't already volunteered. Finley was a busy elf and he aimed to stay that way.

"Stella, did you really just grab a fourth beer?"

"Stay out of it, Finley. It's not your problem."

"Okay, okay."

Finley raised his arms and surrendered. She was clearly a bit stubborn about this and he didn't want to push. He did want to have lunch eventually. What he was probably going to do would be to open it up and make something special. He could make something but it was hard to grok what she wanted.

Finley had known many people who had taken to the bottle after an experience. He'd known even more who had taken to it after no experience. Sometimes it hit hard no matter who you were. He wasn't going to say anything now but maybe later. He would have to talk to Anthony. They were going to have another council meeting around noon. This one might be the one where he decided to go after the death knight.

Bob was still sleeping. Really considered if it was time to wake him or not. Seeing as how he did so much for them, the family wasn't going to leave him sleeping. But with his girlfriend drinking a bit more within was proper, perhaps he might be able to talk to her. So when Finley saw Bob getting up he made the decision to go talk to him.

A smiling bald man sat down next to him. Finley passed a bowl of stew to Bob. He accepted it happily. As they sat next to each other. Bob continued to glance up at Stella.

"Bob, you know Stella best. Do you think she's doing all right?"

Bob sighed, looking over at him. He seemed ten years older at that moment.

"There's no harm in what she's doing. No one is getting hurt. I have no problem with her doing whatever she needs to do to forget what just happened. And when I say that I'm not referring to myself. I'm helping her work through her issues. None of us left Dunnamore unscathed."

Finley held up his water skin.

"A toast to the fallen. May the places that they lay be covered with flowers that we know that they lived a good life."

Finley bleated twice, the Goat Lord's traditional ending to the prayer.

"I feel like I should have a prayer for Mork, but I've never learned one. Is that a thing here? I have to be honest . By now, I thought I would know things. Honestly, I feel rather unprepared with all the special skills he gave me."

"The Goat Lord desires flowers to be placed on the graves of men and women killed. Mork probably has the same passionate hate for those made undead as the Goat Lord does, just without the partying."

"The Goat Lord likes parties?" Bob said.

"The Goat Lord is half party, half animal. We celebrate their lives, we don't mourn. I might call them the fallen but that's another thing."

Bob frowned.

"How many gods are there?" Bob asked. "I feel like I should know this. Are there different pantheons?"

"I'm not entirely certain. Yil is the goddess for most dwarves and gnomes. Mork, as you know, has followers everywhere. Cara is worshiped by traders and tinkers. There are others, like there is a god that orcs worship, and one that has to do with elves and woodlands. There are probably more worshipers across the seas."

"Okay. And when you say, across the seas, how big are we talking here. Do you know how many continents there are in this world?" Bob said.

Finley shrugged.

"Six? And then there's the lost continent. Noverra is the biggest one."

"Lost continent?"

"I only know a few stories. I can tell you if you wish," Finley said. "They are mostly not relevant to anything we are doing though."

"So if we were to find a way off of this continent somehow, would you know which way to go? And then if so, how to steer us there?" Bob said.

"There is a continent due south that isn't so far by boat. I have honestly never considered it before. Tinkers don't do well on water and let's just say that we were not welcomed everywhere as we were here."

"That's a bit sad. The orcs and the humans occupy the land next to the sea, correct?"

"That's about right. One of the dwarves had a good map of the continent. I'll try to find it. I know you're trying to help us, but maybe you can help Stella first?"

"I'll try."