I woke back up in the morning feeling like I was the one who had been drinking all night. It was odd. I knew that I hadn’t, but that tremendous headache you get from not having enough water in your system was telling me that somehow I was the one who was given the hangover, not Sam.

Not that being a jerk is ever truly something that is okay, but it does make more sense why Sam acts the way he did. If what he said was true, he had been stuck in that room for almost a thousand years, working for those who killed or banished the people he knew just because they had been part of the last ruling class. While I could understand the reasons for getting rid of your enemies, it just seems like it is far worse when you’re dealing with lives that, I guessed, didn’t end. Life imprisonment for Sam has already been 1000 years.

“Blink let’s eat and then we need to get moving. Got to get across this river and back down to the other one. I would like to do all that today but I don’t want to camp near those spiders.” I said with a shudder.

Blink eyed me with just one sleepy eye before tucking her nose back under her front legs. Then she sent a sleepy, “sleeps mores.”

“Nope, we are having the last of the dry bacon from the dungeon on the hike and we need to go now. Unless you want to play with the spiders?”

She hissed a little and started to stretch. Her eyes were still closed until I lowered a bit of the bacon down near her snout. Then as quick as a flash, the meat was gone from my hand, and she was moving to the door.

“Bait Lazyss,” she sent over the link like I was the one wanting to sleep longer.

“Okay lets get going!” I said as we opened the door.

We had been relatively lucky so far on the trip. I hadn’t gotten too pressed when setting up our caves, and we hadn’t found a place that was impossible to set up a room. If we were caught off guard when setting up or even found a location with too much groundwater, I might not be able to set up a room. That being said, none of that had happened as of yet. The closest was when we fought the dogs before setting up.

The other thing that we had lucked out on so far was that nothing was waiting outside our hole when we emerged from it. I hadn’t built in a peephole as of yet, nor did I know to make such a thing meaningful. I could put a hole in the rock door, but I couldn’t build cameras to look around and see if enemies were waiting for us.

It was one of those idle thoughts that you mull over as you hike to keep your brain busy. Of course, it wouldn’t matter most of the time, but that one time someone or something was waiting for me could be a big problem. Yet the chances of me getting surprised were so slim that it wasn’t something that I truly needed to work out.

Just half an hour of walking upriver provided us a ford. It wasn’t the greatest of fords in that it didn’t already have rocks to help cross, but the river had broadened out to over a hundred yards. Which meant that it slowed as well. So to help with the crossing, I pulled out my wands of Water-to-Dirt and Dirt-to-Stone. As I went across, I built large stones that were as deep as the river, which meant they would be covered in water if it rose, but they would provide a much-needed passage for any travelers that might need to come this way.

As I was getting ready to turn downriver, I felt the need to add a sign of some sort to let people know to cross here. So I stacked a dozen rocks in a big arrow, turned them all to dirt, and then back to stone so they would fuse to each other. Then it was time to hike. Unfortunately, we had more land to cover than I was happy with.

I had been hoping to have found Essex by now, or at least Cloudia. However, we hadn’t seen any more smoke since I left where the goblins were. If I didn’t know we were going in the right direction, I would think that we were heading away from the cities. Yet, I knew that soon I would find people, and those people would help me get to Cloudia even if I had to pay them some.

Three hours downriver and the relaxed hike started to change again. I could feel the change in the area and knew we were on the edge of the spider’s hunting grounds. So we stopped and built another arrow pointing upriver. Then we turned into the forest at an angle. I was hoping to cut through and find the river again, bypassing the spiders.

As we hiked, I was surprised at how quickly the feeling of being watched vanished from the river. It was like the spiders were happy to stay in the river. Unlike the yellow jackets I was content to leave them alone. I didn’t hold a grudge against them, and I didn’t have a clue how to finish them off. I tended to think of fire when I thought about killing spiders, but these ones spent lots of time in the water, and I didn’t think I had anything that could take them out.

The day was surprisingly easy and straightforward. As we hiked through the forest, I put in some markers so that if there were ever pilgrims, they would have a way to pass this area in safety. Then after a couple of hours in the forest, we came out to the river again. I could tell that we were out of the hunting area of the river spiders as there was plenty of noise around.

With all the fighting that we had done in the past week of travel, I was both thrilled and worried that there wasn’t a single fight all day. It was like hiking back on Earth, except that I had a lizard that was complaining the whole day about nothing trying to kill us.

The room setup started without a hitch as well. I found a nice place where there went many trees and started in with the wands trying to blast my way down, when I came across something that just that morning I had been worried about. The water table in this area was high. Which meant that I needed a way to keep the water out. When I used the wands, I was creating stone which, while strong, was still porous.

This meant that even if I sealed the whole thing with stone, I would still end up at some point in time with a waterlogged room. For tonight the water wouldn’t be a problem. However, I still had to take into account the mission that the Sisters had me on. If this became a spot that wasn’t usable, would they force me to return? Worse yet, would they let me move on if this place wasn’t a long-term workable resting spot for the faithful?

I thought that I had the room ready for me at night. I had it sealed off as best as I could, and everything else was the same as usual. Yet, in the middle of the night, I woke up to dampness across my whole body. The water was seeping through the floor. While it wasn’t much, it was enough to let me know that this room wasn’t going to last more than a few days.

As it stood, I was wet and now had the debuff of poor nights sleep. I got breakfast ready and then chose that it was time to head out. Blink had woken up when I was fixing food, and so she was prepared to move as well. There was no reason to try to sleep in a puddle.

The night was beautiful. The moons were out, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. While we were both tired, we knew that it was just better to move than to try to deal with the room. It was a failure, and we both knew it, but we wanted to see how far we could make it before the sun came up.

We hiked for another four hours before the sun even started to peek over the horizon. The going was tough even with the light of both moons. If there was a trail, it would have been easier, but I was just mostly moving through the open woods near the river. When we crossed over the other river, the landscape had changed again. We were in an area of rolling hills with a pine forest.

As the sun rose, I came over a rise. I came upon the ruins of an old village or town. Not sure where one size ends and the other starts. It wasn’t new ruins like a freshly sacked town. No, this was just the stacked stone walls of buildings mostly falling in on themselves. Where the roads were could be seen as trees weren’t growing there, but everything was overgrown.

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