The dogs had seen me as soon as I got to the top side of the tree. The same angle of the tree that gave me hope of escape also gave them a slope they could run up. Their skeletal claws dug deep in the tree’s side as they bounded toward me. The good thing was that they could only come one at a time. The bad thing was they were all coming.

I didn’t have a great place to stand with the tree’s general curve and the shaking from the pounding of the axe. However, I did have a few branches between them and me that would force their movements. Which also meant that I would be forced to pick a spot to defend. The thing I needed to do was quickly find a place where the branches forced the dogs to come around to my right and also had another branch I could hold on to with my left hand.

The problem that I was seeing with my requirement was that it couldn’t be met. The whole tree was in such a way that if I could fight with my right hand holding on, I would be fine in a dozen places. However, trying to use my sword in my right hand and hold on with my left was a dream that didn’t seem would become a reality.

I didn’t have time to figure out another plan, so I shifted my sword into my left hand and held on with my right. I checked my mana to see that I had just enough for a single casting of a small lay to rest. So I tossed it out about ten feet down the tree from me. I was hoping to stall the first one until the lay to rest took out a few.

The first hell dog came up and passed through my area effect spell, and I saw it weak a little but not near enough. I had my sword tip pointing at where the dog would be forced to swerve around the branch. My hope was to knock it off and, if it lived, get back in line.

As the dog was about to come around the branch at me, I heard the sound of a baseball bat hitting a tree, and I saw the hell dog go flying. It took just a moment for my brain to catch up to what I saw, and I realized that Blink had leveled her stealth enough that she was now able to not break it when hitting.

She pressed into my mind, “bait, run!”

I yelled, “got it!” as I sheathed my sword and started to climb the tree.

Behind me, I heard the sound of claws scraping on bark and the sound of bones hitting the ground. It seemed that where she was ambushing was such a good place that they couldn’t both get around the previous branch and attack her. Even if they could see her, which with a quick glance back seemed to indicate that they couldn’t.

I scrambled up the tree catching myself every few steps because of the continued hammering on the base. While the ogre might be trained and wearing armor and even empowered with more magic, he was still dumb. Without the tree connected to the ground, his axe wasn’t doing much of anything. It was one of those times that I was glad that even with an intelligence score of 8, I was brighter than those I fought.

The further up the tree I got, the less the shaking from below mattered as the branches were more tied into the ones from other trees. Finally, I saw a place where two leg thick branches met going opposite directions, and I took it.

Once I made it over to the trunk of the next tree, I sent a message to Blink, “Made it to the next tree.”

“Hunts fun! Like game!”

I shook my head for a moment. Blink would think that fighting these monsters was like a game. She was likely playing with them somehow to make it more fun while I got away. The ogre was still working on the other tree, so I took a break. If they gave me an hour, I would recharge my mana and try to take out the ogre. If not, then I would need to try this whole mess again.

I had been resting just a few minutes when Blink sent me an image. Down at the base of the tree, a second ogre joined the first. This one, however, wasn’t just bone. Nope, this was a zombie type. Just like I would think of from any horror flick. Gray skin, large gashes, ratty clothing, the whole nine yards. Which, of course, made me think for a moment that the other ogres I saw had gray skin and tattered clothes. They were just missing the decay and gashes.

The skeleton dropped his axe, and both of them grabbed the trunk, and they started to pull. I felt Blink begin to move as she ran up the tree. The whole tree started to sway, and soon it began to fall again. This time it made it all the way to the ground. Then the two started to move through the tree, breaking to cutting all the branches like demented lumberjacks hunting for the squirrel that stole their lunch.

The few hell dogs that were left were acting like they were following a scent which was odd to watch. They couldn’t bark, but they could smell. There were only a few of them left, but they were all around one branch, which was either the one I used or Blink.

I felt out with the bond and quickly found Blink. She was just a few feet from me and not moving. I felt I was pretty well hidden where I was leaning, so I wasn’t going to move either. The ogres, I felt, were things that we couldn’t beat. I wasn’t sure if the regeneration and damage resistance that the living ogres had transferred to these two. That was what bothered me most.

The next half hour was tense. Neither Blink nor I moved at all as we watched the undead move around below us. It was nerve-racking because of being hunted but also because the noises that I was used to hearing from this type of thing were gone. Sadly, the dogs could clearly communicate with each other as they broke apart and ran in five directions, and started to sniff the ground. At least, I thought they were sniffing. They had their heads down but no tissue to show what they were doing.

The ogres, for their part, finished breaking all the branches off the tree, and then they broke the tree. I could tell they were pissed that I wasn’t there. After they turned the tree into splinters, they stopped. They almost looked like they went into a robotic sleep mode. After another ten minutes, the dogs settled down between them, and they, too, looked like they had turned off.

I thought over at Blink, “Think we could climb down and leave?”

“No, they bait.”

“What do you mean?”

“Looks”

Then she sent what she saw from her perch. Just beyond the new clearing where the tree had been were silent stalkers. Dozens at least slowly moving through the grass, snakes of nothing but bone.

I couldn’t see the motion myself. My eyes just weren’t good enough, or perhaps my brain couldn’t process the tiny movements. However, watching through her eyes with her focus let me see our new problem. Her view changed as she slowly moved her oh, so flexible neck around, showing me that we were once again or perhaps always were surrounded.

Unless I had a chance to use skeleton death dance and build a large Lay-to-Rest, I wouldn’t have the magical power to escape this problem. I had pushed on, thinking that the first group of skeletons was an isolated problem and not what appeared to be the tip of the iceberg, with me being the Titanic.

I thought over to Blink, “ideas on how to get out alive?”

“Magics”

“I don’t generate mana fast enough to take them out. At least if they keep coming that is. If this is all that there are then we I whittle them down.”

“Mores coming,” she sent back to me.

“Yeah, that’s what I though.”

“Core?”

“Okay, so build our way out of this.” I thought to her as I changed gears.

I had a little while, not much time, but some time and I could perhaps create something that would fix the issue we had. I had everything I needed to create a core in my necklace already, just waiting for me to tell it I was ready. I also had two level 1 cores that, from what I could tell, would add to what I designed, either strength or dexterity.

So I had enough cores to make three items or a small cluster if I did it right. But that would require me to spend some time making items from what I had with me. While I did have the staves I got from Ni’Bish, I didn’t want to use them just for this. Nope, I was going to do something either brilliant or downright stupid. I wasn’t sure which.