So I never did get off my butt and go camping to test out the wilderness survival skills I had watched on video. And people noticed me not mentioning it.

People like Brother Jude.

"Let's take a weekend trip. I picked up a few things over the years, and I can teach you how to use, and make a sling."

How could I turn down an offer like that?

To my surprise, Jude's car was a land boat, a big 1950's style cream colored convertible with tail fins. And a teenaged boy sitting in the middle of that back seat that was actually a full grown Minotaur.

Brother Jude nodded towards him. “Neal needs some time away from his family. So I made him come.”

Fine with me, the kid probably picked up a few things while he was on another world, and I don’t have any cider for him to drink up on me this time.

“Nice car.”

Jude smiled. "The healing magic I use works on objects as well as living things. I picked this beauty up for a few hundred dollars from a scrap yard. It still took me a few months to fix it up, and it eats gas like crazy, but transmutation is another one of the powers granted to me.”

Heal the sick, transmute water to fuel… I’m wondering if he can walk on water too.

But magic made gasoline? Sounds like something else that will suddenly become illegal like magical healing will be as soon as it starts costing someone money.

It was an unusually nice early spring day, sunny, but not warm enough that I would have planned on taking a ride in a convertible with the top down. But I could tell Neal was enjoying the ride. He must normally not be able to sit upright in a regular car with his real size. Not to mention his horns which stretched up several inches higher.

He even slipped off his amulet for a while, but some people started drifting out of their lanes as they saw him and stopped paying attention to the road, so he slipped it back on.

I had brought a water bottle for the ride that should have taken us six hours, but two hours later we pulled off the highway and reached the national park only a few minutes later.

More magic on the part of Brother Jude I guess, but I didn’t see the need to ask. It was not like it was something he could teach me.

So the first thing I learned, was that carrying the overstuffed large duffle bag I called the Oh Shit bag, as in "Oh Shit, I'm being kidnapped to another world," was a pain in the ass to carry around.

Even with the shoulder strap, it was too heavy and too awkward.

Neal took it from me eventually, and seeing the human illusion of him hefting it along thrown casually over his shoulder was a bit odd. “We’re a good half hour out Neal, I think you’re safe to go Au Natural.”

He thought it over, then removed the Amulet. He seemed happier, and the annoyance I had been feeling toward him seemed to vanish. Oh, the illusion was like the one the White Tree staff had, which is why it was bothering me.

I should try to focus on that feeling on the trip back, maybe next time I’ll know something’s up.

A few hours later we set up camp, Jude showed me how to set up a tarp with some lines and sharpened sticks for pegs to make a tent, while Neal used some bark stripped off of some tree branches he cut down to make a sort of twin to build a shelter from fallen sticks, and more branches cut from a pine tree for the roof and to put something between him and the ground.

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Which is bad for the trees, but he was showing me how to make an emergency shelter. Something that might save my life someday. And it's not like there was a shortage of trees around.

Then we took a nature walk to collect dry wood, small stuff to start a fire with, and larger stuff to burn for cooking. Jude pointed out some edible plants and mushrooms but admitted he was cheating with some low level divination magic.

We also set up a few snares.

Neal made a fire pit and explained how to make sure it got air while keeping most of it out of sight from others.

Let me say this, foraged food sucks. A few tins of salt are going into my Oh shit bag and the storage rings along with some pepper and garlic powder.

There is surviving, and then there is living.

Some of the plants we had gathered when burned or rubbed on your skin sort of kept the bugs away, but it was still a rough night with the buzz of mosquitoes' wings around my ears, and all the itching in the morning.

Wet wipes, going to need those and some calamine lotion.

One of the snares caught a rabbit.

Neal walked me through gutting and cleaning it, after snapping its neck, "Tomorrow you should do all of it yourself." Jude gave me some pointers on how to tan the skin, not that we tried it then and there.

Then we were off for another hike, a short one this time to a river where Jude showed me how to make a fish trap out of reeds, and I got to try out the fishing line out of my survival knife’s handle.

Some people in canoes came down the river every now and then, and Neal put his amulet on after some girls gave him a few scared looks.

In the afternoon, Jude showed me how to make a quick and cheap sling, and I got the hang of how to spin it and release a stone. “That’s what you need someone to help you learn, after this it’s just practice to learn how to hit something you're aiming at.”

Neal had managed to find two big sticks suitable for staffs, and I got to learn some basic moves with him and Jude. To both my and Neal's surprise, the good brother was better with a stick than Neal, as long as Neal didn't use his full strength.

Jude grinned at Neal when he mentioned that he was holding back. “You use your strength, and I’ll use my magic, I think the results may surprise you. I was over there in my world for twenty years kiddo, you were only in yours for two.”

Neal didn’t challenge it, and as the sun started to go down and we headed back to our camp, he put his amulet back on since we started to run into hikers.

He had taken it off again since sparring against a guy that was seven foot eight but looked around five ten was throwing me off.

Which is why Unseelie Knight that came for me thought it was just me, a monk, and a kid sitting around the campfire cooking fish on skewers.

We had gotten a pretty good catch between the fish traps and some lines we had set up and left for when we got back. Nothing big, but plenty of little ones to fill us up.

After I got done cleaning them all. Jude had done one to show me how to do it, then I was on my own.

Gross, and messy.

I had gone fishing with my grandfather several times when I was a kid and he was still alive, but Grandpa had never made me clean the fish, take them off the hook, or even bait them.

One minute we were sitting around the fire, the next a tall painfully thin guy wearing armor that looked like red glass was standing on the other side of the fire, staring down at me with a sneer.

Appearing one by one behind him were creatures, some goblins, wolves that walked on their hind legs and carried jagged blades, and even what I swear looked like a Bigfoot.

It had a log with antlers with sharpened tips strapped to it in its hands.

“James, son of James the first. Brother of Imogene. Your family owes me a blood debt. I will collect it from you."

I'm not trying to sound like a badass here, but I wasn't that afraid. The numbers were bad, and they were armed while I at best had a stick about ten feet away, but under most circumstances, I would be alone and already running away with some degree of confidence in getting enough of a lead to get the Thunderer out of my Ready2Go bag.

But with Jude and Neal here, I guess it was time for the bag of iron filling I kept in the storage ring. If I scattered that around in the air then all three of us could run away.

But it turned out, I had two real badasses with me.

Jude stood and lit up with a brilliant radiance that when it faded away revealed him standing there in a gleaming silver coat of chain with a shield on his arm bearing a red cross. Something medieval looking with a pick head on one side and a four spiked hammer head on the other was in his hand.

Neal sighed as he stood up and removed his necklace. Holding out his hand toward our fire and saying a word under his breath that I couldn't make out, the handle of an immense scimitar seemed to be made of flames stretched out from the burning coals and into his hand in response.

The two of them looked at the entire crew facing me, as I stood and waved my hand at the other side of the fire. "I prefer Jim, but please join us, and maybe we can work out this blood debt without anyone getting hurt.”

Baron Erebus’s cousin got killed by Imogene’s field team when they caught him stealing children for slaves, and Erebus had been pressed by his family to avenge him somehow. He swore on his blade that it would taste her blood, but his fiance, a seer, told him he wasn’t going to have much luck.

Or survive.

But it seemed like my blood as Imogene’s brother was close enough.

So after joining us for dinner, to which he contributed a nice skin of a light dry white wine that Brother Jude pronounced to be safe, I let him poke the tip of my finger with the pointy end of the red glass looking sword he called Sanguine, and then he and his crew were on their way.

In the morning I completely botched cleaning a rabbit. At least the snare had broken its neck so I didn't have to kill it.

How did everyone else’s weekend go?

Addendum:

So apparently Brother Jude's hurt stick is called a warhammer, dispute it being completely incapable of hammering in a nail or anything like that with all the spikes on the working end. I guess that's the war part of the name.