With Blink giving me a hug and accusing me of hunting without her, I couldn’t hold back a laugh. I had been going for over 24 hours at this point and had slipped up. I should have bathed or come in from below. But I had been set on my original plan of sneaking back.

Kasidy was staring at me with confusion written all over her face. Blink didn’t care. I just walked through a doorway that vanished, but Kasidy did. I could see her trying to work out what was going on. If it had been a cartoon, then the gears would have been spinning, and smoke would have been coming out of her ears.

As it was, I figured that I needed to take control of what was going on. If she was focused on this, then she wouldn’t ask about other things as much. With my stories about Ash, I might could get her to leave off the champion thing.

I smiled. “Hey, Kasidy. How was your morning?”

Kasidy just stared at me for a while and couldn’t seem to get words going. I knew that she had been awake for a while since there was burned food in the skillet. So it wasn’t that she was still waking up it was that she was trying to piece things together.

I pointed at the safe room door. “Let’s go talk I am hungry and need a drink.”

I walked through the door and to a table and dropped my pack on it. Then I sagged down into the chair. I was too tired, and I knew it. The girl might be a bit of a flake, but I either told her something, or she would make it up on her own. I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to do that.

“Dave, do you have any ground meat?”

Dave came walking over from the bar and sat down with a pad of paper. “I do. What do want done with it?”

I sighed. “Okay, fry up some onions and peppers. Once that’s done press about half a pound of the ground meat into a patty and fry that. Then put it on a slice of bread put the peppers and onions on top and another slice.”

Dave looked at me for a moment. “So do you want what you described or what you were thinking?”

I smiled. “What I was thinking and a couple of beers for me and one for Kasidy when she gets here.”

Dave nodded and wandered back over to the bar, where he started to cook. I needed to get cleaned up and get rest. There was no way we were pushing forward today. I was just too tired, which I wasn’t happy about. But it did mean that once I got Kasidy squared away, I could teach her how to shoot.

About ten minutes later, Kasidy and Blink came through the door. Kasidy looked around while Blink made a beeline to the bar. Blink hopped up on the bar stool. I couldn’t make out what she said, but Dave laughed, and then a few pancakes showed up.

Dave had already brought the beer over, so I just pointed to the seat. “I bet you have a few questions for me, don’t you?”

Kasidy sat down and looked at the beer. Then she picked it up and took a sip. She smiled and took a deeper pull, and then slammed the wooden tankard onto the table. She reached into her bag and pulled out her book and writing supplies.

When she had everything in front of her, she asked. “What was the doorway?”

“What do you think it was?”

She looked down at the table and then up at me. “It’s the doorway of the gods?”

I took a big drink and shook my head. “It was a transportation arch between dungeons.”

Kasidy coughed and looked at me with widening eyes. “How? I have never heard of anything like that?”

“Not sure how. I know it works but not why it works. As to why you haven’t heard of it before? Likely because those who can do it don’t let others know about it. I was too tired when I came back and forgot where you would be.”

“How did a dungeon get here? It wasn’t here when we went to sleep but now it is.”

I chuckled. “How do you think it got here?”

I could see her mind running away from her. “Are you the god of dungeons?”

I started to laugh. I couldn’t figure out why this girl kept running back to the gods with everything. Sure they were here and did some stuff, but it wasn’t like magic wasn’t real. At every turn, she wanted to make me into some great and powerful person.

I managed to stop laughing. “No, I am not a god. Just a man.”

“Did it follow us from the waterfall? Is that why the bartender is the same man?”

I shook my head slowly. “I put it here. Perhaps why Bartholomew sent you to follow me is because I have been tasked with spreading dungeons.”

“By who?”

“Not saying.”

Kasidy nodded and thought. “Why are you spreading them?”

I smiled. “Because I have been tasked to.”

She gave me a real smile at that and laughed. “If others find out about this it could be bad for you. If you were a god it wouldn’t matter but there are those who will try to stop you. There will be those who try to control you.”

“Yeah... That’s why I was trying to do it without you finding out but I failed. So that means that I have to figure out what to do about you.”

Before Kasidy could respond, Dave butted in. “Here’s your lunch. Did I get it right?”

I looked down at my plate. I was amazed at what I saw. Dave had managed to get a honey-buttered bun that was light a fluffy. The burger looked amazing; he even got the lettuce and tomato perfect. Beside it were large stake fries that looked like he had baked with large gains of salt on them.

I grinned. “Dave if it tastes like it looks then you did it perfectly!”

He grabbed my empty tankard and headed back to the bar. Blink was over there with her head tilted back, dropping a moving spider into her mouth. Then as I watched her, she crunched it up and added a fork full of pancakes.

I turned back to my food and took a bite. It was one of the best burgers that I had ever had. The meat was perfect, but on top of that, everything tasted fresh. I sighed and looked over at Kasidy.

She was lost in space, looking off, so I spoke up. “So, any ideas about what I should do about you?”

She gulped and looked back over at me. “Umm… I don’t know.”

“Yeah see that’s the problem I’m not sure either right now.”

I took the next few minutes eating the burger and fries. While trying to think about what to do. I had stopped not trusting her; I just didn’t trust her. But now she knew that I could move between dungeons and that I could put them places.

I finished up my plate and looked over at her. “Ideas?”

She stammered for a few moments. “None that I can think of. I am just here to be your helper you don’t have to worry about me telling others about you.”

I pointed at her book. “Aren’t you suppose to write my story and all that?”

Kasidy gulped and looked at her book. Then she nodded to me. She pulled the book tight to her chest but was torn as to what to do.

I sighed and stood up. “Look Kasidy. I am going to go to sleep for a while. I had a hard day when I get up we are going to figure this out.”

With that, I grabbed my gear and headed toward the rooms. “Dave! I am grabbing a room for some rest.”

I looked back at Kasidy. “Don’t leave.”

I went up to a room and crashed. I wasn’t worried about the mess as much as about getting rest. I needed the sleep, and most of my gear was self-cleaning. So I took it off and fell face forward onto my bed.

As I was drifting off, I muttered. “She is a problem that I didn’t want.”

I fell into a blissfully dreamless night’s rest. When I woke up, I was fully rested. All my gear had been wiped down and organized. There was a tankard of water and some meat and cheese on the table.

I stretched and thought for a few moments. I doubted that Dave messed with my gear. Blink never had, which meant that Kasidy had come in while I was asleep. Not the worst thing since we were in a safe room but kind of amazing since I was a light sleeper. It also meant that she was trying not to be worthless.

I pulled up a bucket of warm water from the dungeon interface and started to bathe. “I guess I need to talk with the old men. See if there is any pledge or something that the could keep her from turning on me. Then once I know what it is called I ask Sam how to do it.”

Once I was geared up, I walked back into the main tavern. The place smelled like smoke and half-burned meals. As I came around the turn in the stairs, I saw that Kasidy was behind the bar with, smoking pots and pans trying to cook. Dave was beside her, making motions and talking. Blink was sitting on the bar doing her little lizard laugh, eating a cookie.

* * *