Sonya tried to slow her breath. She had ran out of the basement. She was looking for something, anything to take her mind off what she'd found.

She found herself sitting against the mansion, looking into the yard. The hyperventilating was finally turning into regular breathing.

She saw Anthony talking to Bob and flagged him down. He nodded, then broke off and approached her. By the time he got there, she had nearly regained her cool.

"Hey Sonya, you look a little flushed. Is everything alright?"

"More or less. How are the guys? They hit two houses in rapid succession. We got several good cards, are we sure that we need to send them on this mission?" Sonya said.

They were already prepping to depart. Sonya didn't think that she would change anything. She just didn't like that four of them were headed off on their own. Also nobody could pay her enough to wade into the possibly infested urban areas in the center of town.

"They're fine. If we want to make this caravan viable instead of just going it alone, then yes. I meant the whole convoy as a whole there, not just the tinker caravan," Anthony said. "I'm thinking about the big picture here."

Further exploration of the first mansion had garnered enough food to stave off hunger for another day. There were some loose ends, but she was getting to them. She could see Anthony itching to do the exploration himself. As the group's only cleric, it didn't make sense. So instead, he had to be compensating by working everyone else as hard as they could.

"Sonya, do you think you could make it onto the roof of the mansion?" Anthony asked.

She looked up. Sonya had a history with vertigo, something that hadn't bothered her in a few days. She was grateful that it had not followed her here. So long as she could keep the bottle off her brain, she would be happy.

The house would be a challenge. There was only so much dirt that could be brought out. She needed some kind of architect skill if they were going to make her do these kinds of things on the regular.

"I don't really want to, but I could if I needed to. I could do like dirt shaped steps. But you understand that I'm taking dirt from around the house and I already took a bunch to make the wall. Also I'm thinking that we need to make four walls if we're here longer than a day. You only had me make one."

There hadn't been any zombies trying to eat them. Sonya had credited that to the wall and how far they were from the center of town. They had learned a lot about how dwarves stored their food. The main thing they had learned was that the more underground they could go, the cooler it got.

As soon as she saw the barrels that had to have some dwarven brew, that was it.

"There's fucking tunnels underneath us possibly extending around the entire compound, by the way. I didn't know that until I got inside the basement and put two and two together. It's something else, it is. Reminds me of that one-tell me if you've heard this one-building in Alaska where the entire town lives in."

"Does Wes Anderson know about said building?"

"That's what I said!"

When she tapped into the earth moving spell, she could feel the open empty space beneath them. It wasn't too close, but if these formerly rich dwarves had the inking to do so.

"Hey Anthony. Do you think that there were dwarven preppers?"

"When you say preppers, that's not some Gen Z slang for preppies, right?"

"No, Daddio, I'm talking about those people who are preparing for the end times. Like stocked up for nuclear winter with a fall back plan."

"That's something. For some reason I thought of that as some quintessentially American thing. But I don't actually know where you're from. Where were you from?"

"Saskatchewan."

"That's somewhere in Canada. That's about all I could tell you."

Sonya laughed. It was hard to find someone who knew anything about her home province.

"That's fine, eh. I'm not asking for much. Just a woman respectfully asking if we have someone who can pick locks, or someone strong. I think that if dwarven preppers exist, that this family might have a sealed vault or something. There's a door that I can't for the life of me open."

"That's something. You tried your magic and it failed, I take it?"

"Something along those lines." She placed a hand on his shoulder feeling the muscles through his scrubs, "Also we should consider getting more local clothes."

Anthony had probably heard about the laundry situation. Sonya wanted to make sure that he didn't forget it. She didn't want to be a nag, but she would if she had to. In order to launder the clothing that her group was going to create, they would need a copious amount of soap. To say nothing for running water. Sonya had considered getting the barrel a friend. That was another thing on her to-do list.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Anthropomorphizing the wagons and some of the containers as well. It's too bad that none of the dwarves had a googly eye collection. Perhaps there was some Eldritch spell that would let her make markings on the wagons.

"Ah yeah I think when you were exploring the tunnels underneath, Andrew found their small clothes. He thinks that he can adjust most of them for us. His won't need much adjustment. That plus the ornate short spears mean that we're going to have at least something to outfit ourselves."

"Also, Anthony, for as many smutty fantasy novels I read, I have no fucking idea how they cleaned their clothes. I'm not going to have my bodice ripped anytime soon, but I would like to keep clean. Don't we have a cleaning card?" Sonya said, eyeing him carefully.

"I mean we do, yeah, but the smell afterwards. It's like an overactive teenage boy who thinks he's about to get some."

The subtle smell had been a bit of a change from the undead smell. Upon further reflection, Sonya preferred the clean teenage boy smell over the rotting flesh one. The obvious choice was pretty glaring. She didn't want to remember the cages. She shuddered, just thinking about it. They had been nose blind to their own stench until the night prior. It was her biggest gripe after the constant threat of death and all.

"That's about right. I remember that specific time in a young man's life."

He didn't smell horrible, at least.

"Tell me you didn't pour on the sporty body spray."

"Well I preferred the rugged scents, especially as I was trying to cultivate my image," Anthony said, stroking his beard. "I didn't grow all of this overnight you know. Long hair takes time."

Sonya considered how well put together he was for the situation. She felt like a mess, especially since she hadn't been able to find a hair tie. Then it hit her.

"Wait. Where did you get that hair tie?" She said.

"I guess I came with it?"

"How much do you want for it?" she said, grabbing his shirt. There was nothing she wanted more at that moment than to feel a modicum of normal.

"Uh what?"

She closed the distance so there were six inches apart. He gulped.

"Look at me, mountain man-"

"I'm from the Bronx."

"-we have had to figure out women's products, we are barely surviving out here and death is around every door. So the least you could do is help a sister out. What do you want for it?"

"Uh...Sonya? Could you please release me?" He said.

Sonya unclenched her hands from his scrub top. The situation had gotten out of her hands quickly. She stepped back.

"Sorry. Things have been a little tense," she said. She slowly counted to ten.

It wasn't that he smelled bad. In fact she kinda liked the smell. In the moment, she latched into the one thing. She knew she was wrong.

"That's entirely understandable, bring it in."

He held his arms out. She didn't hesitate. She sunk into the arms of the bear sized man. With her head against his chest, she almost forgot that she was on a strange new world. At least she had some people with her.

Doing this alone? That would be a death sentence.

Sonya stuck there for far longer than was proper. It's what you do when you don't want people to know that tears were flowing freely.

"Hey, I know like everything in this forsaken place is against us, but I'm not going to let you down, alright?" He whispered.

"You're lying," she said.

"I'm not sure how to solve this. But together we'll do our best."

"You're a bastard, Anthony."

"Noted."

She let him go. His blue scrub top had a noticeable wet spot. She used her sleeve to clean and dry herself.

"Sorry about that," she said. She didn't really mean it. She would have preferred to continue holding him but after a minute it was getting to be a bit much. Maybe he didn't mind though?

"So uh," she said.

"Yeah."

He undid his hair, letting the wind catch it. She bit her lip. Why did he have her heart racing? He handed her the hair tie.

She held it reverently.

"Do you want to tell me how the warlock class works?"

She blinked there for a long minute. The statement had seem like it was out of place but he was probably just trying to throw everyone off his scent. His amazing musky scent that really shouldn't have made her feel like a teenage girl.

"Let me show you."She brought up her card in her left palm, making it large enough to see. An icon of a circle glinted in a purple hue on the gold card.

Rare Class Card: Warlock Level 2

Skills:

Eldritch Spellcasting Level 3

Ritual Casting Level 2

Enchantment Level 1

Survival Level 2

Medicine Level 1

Patron Pact Level 1

This card grants mana.

As a warlock, you may have a patron.

This is a soul card and cannot be removed.

"Sure would be nice if someone else had animal handling. Your Spellcasting is doing a lot of heavy lifting though. If it moved so much dirt, you oh-wow level three in the skill."

Sonya smiled. At least she could impress him. With no other suitable friends around, he would be a great help. She wanted to build around her combat power in a specific way, but maybe she could stand to listen to Anthony's card theories.

"What's the pact about? Do you have a patron? I have a patron deity, not that I know much about them."

"I don't actually know. I mean when I got summoned, all I got was the prompt to choose a class and then a goat yelled at me?"

Anthony blinked.

"Did you-you had the goat lord as a patron?" Anthony said.

"I mean, yeah?"

"You should probably speak with Finley then. He follows the goat lord. I'm tied to Yil, like I have to be for my cleric powers to work. She's the patron deity of crafters so most dwarves and some gnomes followed her teachings. I'm not even sure how this even works to be honest. Have you tried to change your patron? Is that even possible?"

"I hadn't even thought of that. That's seemingly ridiculous. Like what if I made you my patron or some thing."

Or boyfriend. Were there even boyfriends in the apocalypse? It didn't really matter to Sonya at the moment.

"Ah yeah. That's silly. Finley said that you have to have three or four of the five card skills to make a class card but I don't know who would agree to a pact with an otherworldly figure as a card."

"Yeah it's just the options that the goat presented me with. I chose the one with magic. It beamed the abilities of the classes into my mind without saying anything. It wouldn't have been so odd if it had done anything but bleat at me."

"And then you got captured by the death knight, huh?"

"Yeah. I would prefer not to talk about that particular incident."

"Ah, yeah. Not a problem, Sonya. Sorry I brought it up. I guess if you got an idea of how it works, that helped?"

"Yeah. Otherwise I wouldn't have gotten the skill so advanced already."

"Yeah. It's a bit odd. My spell skill got to level three but Finley has been telling me that it took him ages to get his to that level."

"That's interesting," she said, flipping her hair. "So, uh, how about Bob and Stella? You think they'll do something?"

Anthony gulped.