We all retreated to our houses. Jake and I took one, Tanya and Jackie another, eGirl and Miranda took the next and the Smith’s took the final one. The night passed quickly and quietly. I’m trying not to raise a flag here, but I’m surprised that we haven’t had more random encounters. I mean other than the squirrels and the vulture we haven’t had any wandering monster type encounters. Don’t get me wrong, I’m Ok with that, I just wonder about the monster density. What did They do to make the monsters appear? How often? How many monsters are there? I wonder if any of the Oklahoma Park Rangers survived? I wondered if they’ve started tracking monster populations, migrations, density, started ranking them into danger towards the population. Yeah, not going there, unhappy place. I forcibly broke that train of thought.

Basically right now all we’ve faced is giant versions of Oklahoma wildlife, but mom mentioned Griffons. What if instead of Giant Turkeys, we start facing things like Manticores or, for god’s sake, Dragons. Just what I want to face - huge, possibly intelligent flying monsters? beasts? with magic and a breath weapon all wrapped up in a coat of plate armor. Please don’t let Smaug exist! On the plus side, it’d be over quickly.

I had second watch tonight, followed by Big Mike, then Tanya. Janet had first. I’d also decided that I’d sleep tonight. I was starting to get tired and the meditation didn’t seem to be cutting it anymore. With our focus on debuffs, I’d discovered one on my stamina, Poorly Rested, which decreased my stamina’s regeneration. I figured that if I didn’t get some rest, it’d probably start impacting my health and mana regeneration too. Also Qi, but I haven’t used Qi really yet. Another thing to add to my list of things to do in the apocalypse. I told everyone of the debuff I’d discovered and the girls mentioned that they had it as well. So did Big Mike and Consuelo. I advised everybody to sleep enough to get that debuff off.

Janet woke me up to take over watch and the debuff had vanished. It’s good to have a high constitution! I looked over and saw Jake wasn’t sleeping. He was stretched out, but I could tell that even though his eyes were closed, he was awake. I left him alone.

I can’t believe the night sky. The stars looked so close that it almost looked as if you could touch them. Plus they weren’t all white, you could see red ones, blue ones, basically every hue of light that a star was capable of putting out. It was beautiful. I’d taken an astronomy class at Stanford and the stars that we’d covered I could remember and find (at least their location) in the sky. I also remembered the constellations and could find them, map them in the sky. It looks like They hadn’t changed the stars, just added a couple of additional moons. I wondered what the moons were called? Did They name them or were They waiting for a consensus to form? I thought about asking my imue, but I just couldn’t be bothered.

Our watch consisted of stepping out of the exit and doing a brief scan of the woods, Maxes, then back inside the courtyard. We’d do this about every 10 minutes or so. I could hear voices coming from the Smiths and eGirl’s house, but nothing from Tanya’s and Janets. Sleeping or meditating, I imagined. I might have heard sounds of muffled sobbing coming from within my house, but I didn’t step inside. Jake needed his privacy. I’m pretty sure he’s broken right now. We’ll need to watch him. I’d hate to lose him, so many dead, so many injured. Eventually, my watch ended and I settled down next to the door in a cross-legged position, the Sukhasana pose, and began my meditation on the new spells that I’d received from Jake, eGirl, and Miranda. I did my process of reviewing, yearning and expecting while trying to be deserving method of receiving spells, lots of ings in there, and eventually, I got all of them.

It’s funny, but the ones that took the longest, almost twice as long as the others were the ones from Miranda. She hadn’t demonstrated the spells, all of the other spells were either used or demonstrated, with the exception of Create Block which took substantially longer to get as well. I made a note that we’d have to demonstrate the spells for the new crew in the morning.

After the almost two hours it took me to get the spells, I started my casting/meditation routine again. Cast, then meditate. Cast, then meditate. I made a mental note to check that everyone was only burning half their mana before meditating to get it back. Judging by the number of yellow Force Bolts I could see flashing into the night and the frequency, I’m pretty sure everybody remembered. I’d decided to work on Shield for half the night, Force Bolt the other half. I started with Force Bolt. Despite saying that I wasn’t going to spend the skill points, I decided to anyway. I spent five and brought my total up to 8998 level points and then started meditating. By the time my two and a half hours was up, I’d brought my total level points up to 9501. Almost enough to spend another skill point and gain another rank, Copper 9. Then I switched to Shield and started grinding the spell. It was kind of funny how as I cast each Shield spell, the glow of the protection grew. By the time it was yoga time in the morning, I was surrounded in a bright yellow glow from all of the repeated casts of the shield spell. I looked like a human-sized incandescent bulb, I’m pretty sure. I stayed on Bronze 5.

We did yoga and everyone showed up for it, including our three new ones. Then we did Martial Arts, Archery and Formations. I’ll just say that everyone got the standard skill gains. Formations, in particular, looked, well, like beginner’s Line Dancing class at your favorite Country & Western bar. Lots of missteps, wrong movements, collisions, stubbed toes. At one point Amada yelled at eGirl for stepping on her foot. But by the end, we were kind of moving in a formation. Lots of room for improvement. Jake, in particular, seemed to be having problems. More attention problems than movement problems. He was athletic enough, he just didn’t seem capable of paying attention. He responded about a half to a full step behind everyone else. Not all the time, but enough that it was noticeable. Everybody tried not to notice though.

It took longer to get through the practice sessions too. Normally, we’d be done by 9:00 to 9:30, today we didn’t finish ‘til almost 11. Most of that was formations though, but if we were planning on going inside Maxes again, we had to get it together. Big Mike took over the training, while Tanya remained our caller. She cast her illusions and we’d take turns hitting them with Force Bolts. Every time Baila or Amada would hit one, they’d scream ‘oorah’ and we’d all echo it back. That was pretty much the highlight of the practice.

Finally, we finished and collapsed into our compound’s central area around the fire. It was a beautiful sunny day, about 21° C. I asked how everyone’s practice went and we all sounded off. I started with mine: Shield Bronze 5, Force Bolt Copper 9.

Big Mike and Consuelo both stayed on Bronze 5. They still got in about an hour’s practice. Lack of sleep did them in, they were able to push off sleep for one night, but they needed a full seven hours rest last night to eliminate the tiredness debuff.

The same thing happened with Janet and Tanya. Tanya needed slightly more sleep than Janet, but they both needed most of the night. Tanya just got an hour of practice in on Force Bolt but wasn’t able to get it to advance to the peak of Peak. Janet practiced “Light Heal” some more. She got in a couple of hours of practice. After she hit the Late Stage she spent the six skill points and brought the spell up to Level Nine, but wasn’t able to roll the spell over to Copper.

The two little girls didn’t even attempt it. The battle, meeting the new folks, building the houses, exhausted them and they slept the whole night through. They didn’t even attempt to get their new spells. And, of course, eGirl and the other two were tired and beat up from the road, their battle with the skink, Jake’s wife and daughter dying, it was a hard day for all of them. They just attempted to sleep, some more successfully than others.

After we finished telling what we’d accomplished, it was clear that we all had needed a full night’s rest. Unfortunately, that meant that we were no stronger than we were the day before. Sad but true.

I looked around and everyone had a glum expression on their face. I didn’t want to take this group into combat. Although yesterday had gone well, it could have gone better. I wound up taking slightly more than half of the rats out. If I’d been targeted more effectively, I could have been less effective and the battle could have gone a whole different way. I didn’t like having the kids in there.