I was just under half my health as I dragged the two dead harpies out of the entrance to my elevator. I fired off a pair of minor healing which helped some but wouldn’t get me to where I needed to be. Eventually, I had to get my breastplate off so that I could take a full breath again.

However, if I just popped it off, I ran a high risk of breaking it right now. Which I didn’t want to do since it had gained so much power. So, for now, I walked with shallow steps into the thicket. As I passed through, I felt the change of moving into a dungeon.

I dropped the two harpies, and the more destroyed of the two got adsorbed. Then I checked to see if the dungeon would let me use her as a target. I sighed because harpy didn’t pull up as a target. That meant that they were natives of this world that could worship.

I looked down at the second pile of feathers. It was the one that I had been calling Big Bird. I paused to think about what to do. I knew that I had missed the chance to turn her into a zombie, as that needed to happen soon after death. But, on the other hand, a skeleton might not give me much information.

No, I was mad enough that I went into the tree house to get my bag. As I walked in dripping blood, Kasidy saw me and pulled out her panpipes. Then she started to play. As she did, I saw my health begin to climb. I also felt the anger that I had slowly fading.

Soon I was doubled over, coughing out blackish gunk. My anger that I had left as the gunk came up. I was hurt, but I wasn’t crazy angry anymore.

I took a breath and asked. “What’s that black stuff?”

Kasidy stopped playing and looked at it. “That’s what’s left of a curse. I wasn’t sure if you were under one but with Harpies its better to check.”

My head started to get a little groggy. “Any idea what it does?”

Kasidy nodded. “Yup, harpies are known as informational gathers, scouts and spies. It is because of the curse that they get so much done. It forces you to tell them what they want to know.”

I laughed and shook my head. “It didn’t work for them. I attacked and killed them.”

Kasidy sighed. “So curses get stronger if the person who casts them dies. So you were trying to figure out how to get them the information they asked for.”

I stopped digging in my pack when she said that. I knew that I was searching for the ring that would have let me turn the harpy’s soul into a wraith. It would have put her in endless suffering, but I would have gotten what I wanted from her. The answer of who was coming after me. I didn’t know how that would turn into me giving the answer.

I gave Kasidy a side look. “I know what I was doing but I’m not sure how it would have gotten them the answer they were asking for.”

“What were they asking?”

“My name and how I hid from them.”

Kasidy nodded and thought for a moment. “I don’t need to know what you were going to try only what you hoped to get out of what you were doing.”

“I was just trying to find out who sent them and where they came from.”

As soon as I said that, my mind started to run. Because I knew the next thing I would have done was, I would have sent the wraith back to the queen, or I would have gone myself. I wasn’t powerful enough to deal with them, but I didn’t care at that time. I wanted my pound of flesh for attacking me so I would have gone.

I looked at the harpy for a while and thought of my options. I could still use the ring to find out who they were, but I just didn’t think I was the type to torture someone, for as long as I had them locked up. I wanted the information but didn’t want to deal with the moral issue.

I turned to Kasidy. “Thank’s for healing me, I was in a bad way. Is Blink running the dungeon?”

Kasidy smiled and nodded. “Your welcome Arn and yes Blink got bored and went into the dungeon two days ago. I waited out her because I wanted to see what all you were doing.”

I nodded. “I need to fix my equipment and make some changes to some gear. So I am going to be focused on that for a while. For safety since there were at least these two harpies I suggest that you hang out here.”

Kasidy nodded and looked at me again. “How long are you going to be gone?”

I thought for a while. “No more than a few hours. I should be back by tonight.”

With that, I gathered up my equipment and stepped through a transportation doorway. Then, I went back to the waterfall dungeon. It had the highest level and was growing on its own because of the mana in the area.

When I got there, I went right into the safe room, dragging the dead harpy with me. I took off my broken bits of armor. I took my first full breath in the past hour when the breastplate came off. I was happy that it dented in the three inches where my stomach was. If my dumb sphere had hit me higher, my sternum would have broken. Then I started to buy cheap metal to fix my gear.

As I fed my gear, I was looking at the ring I was thinking about. It was the soul anchor which would be used to anchor a soul and turn it into a wraith. I knew from fighting the wraith that they were intelligent and all there. I also knew that the description said they were always in pain. They were anchored here but drawn to the other side.

I wasn’t sure how much I wanted the information, but I knew that this ring could give me what I wanted. The problem was I didn’t like the side effect. Sure the harpy attacked me, and sure I would cause any amount of pain to win a fight. The problem was did I want to do that to someone who had already been beaten.

I grabbed a beer from Dave and sat back, looking at the ring. I didn’t know how the ring did what it did. That was a big issue. There was writing on the inside of the band. The writing moved around like all writing did, but I guessed it was the spell. The skull, I could tell, had more magic around it as well, but I just didn’t understand any of it.

On the good side, the outside of the band was blank. So I had some room to work in runes. Also, I could put the socket for the core next to the skull. To make it look right, I should likely put in two, one on each side, but I wasn’t sure I cared that much.

As I drank my beer, I thought through what I needed. I needed a way to get the info from this body. My hope was that there was still enough of a connection with its spirit that I could pull that back and put it in the ring. If not, then I needed a way to make the brain on the harpy talk. Which would be more like a zombie. The problem with the zombie is you have to cast the spell right as they die. Once again, the spirit thing…

I sighed. Honestly, it was the same moral question that plagued people for all time. Could I torture someone just to get info? I didn’t have absolute control over things I put a core into. Sure with the thicket, I did a ton of runes and made the whole thing from scratch. It likely would have worked to some extent without the core. The problem was changing something that was already done.

All the magical items that I added cores to just did what they were doing better. If I tried to add runes to it, then would any of it still work. Then if it did. If I was able to make the spirit turn into a wraith, would it then be a slave?

I knew that it wasn’t the whole spirit from what the shamans had told me. But it was still enough that it could think, talk and feel pain. So even if I could make the ring not cause pain, I would still be enslaving the harpy. Which might be acceptable to others, but it was a bridge too far for me.

I leaned back at the table and sighed. I needed better options. I needed to know who was coming for me and why. More than that, I needed real help because while Kasidy proved she was helpful today, it would be nice to have backup in a fight.

I had the dungeon consume the harpy as I got up. I needed time not to think, and I figured that I was at least mostly safe on my landing. I didn’t want to talk to anyone; I just wanted to forget the fight. It had been the most disturbing of all of them.

I took my gear to my yurt and set it up on the armor stand. Then I grabbed the beer bucket and headed over to my willow tree. I reached out to it with plant empathy and felt the string of the seed from Ni-Bish that I had planted. It wasn’t much, but I could tell that it was already starting to grow. I needed to come back and plant more seeds. I also needed to see if I could plant them at the thickets.

I hopped up into the tree chair and sat the beer down. Then I stared off over the moving lake. I hated that the harpies had gotten under my skin, but I knew why they did. They weren’t the first to talk with me. But it was the question they kept asking.

I drained the first bottle. “What is my real name? I just keep going by this dumb name on my screen but it still doesn’t feel right. Every time Kasidy calls me by it I feel wrong.”

* * *