Editing Summary:The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England

The next morning while bathing in the cold stream, he thinks about how Jen would know when heated plumbing would be invented. The group packs up and takes off on horseback. After a few hours, John is sore from not having nanos heal him instantly. He tries to talk to Sefawynn, but she doesn't think they can go back to the way things are. She is taking Woden's punishments in hopes their suffering will pay for ancient sins. Woden blames them for the death of his wife. John questions why they worship the god, but the questioning doesn't lead anywhere. Thokk hides behind a rock and tries to join them without anyone noticing. John asks her why. She tells him she uses her old age to get out of scrapes and becomes a normal old woman when in a group. She warns him about the bandits ahead waiting to attack them, but it is already too late.

The twelve well-dressed bandits are upon them quickly and stop their party. Thokk warns John that they are desperate men. The leader taps a tree and Thokk does the talking. Ealstan says they are taking advantage of the king's follies. Thokk tells him to keep quiet while the men are guarding the nice tree. They allow her to pass without paying the toll, but charge Ealstan double. John notes that the robbery is similar to his experiences with the mafia. He mentions it is the first thing that has made sense to him in that world. He is then knocked out from behind.

John wakes up in a dark room. He realizes they were watching for people with accents and that was why they knocked him out. He finds a loose board and pries it off to see he is deep in the forest. He turns off his visual augments and sees shadows moving. They disappear when he has the night vision turned on. He starts moving through the forest and finds the twelve bandits sitting around a fire. He starts to rush the leader when he realizes his friends are also sitting around the fire. The leader turns to face him, and he sees it is Ryan.

John is surprised to see Ryan, who came into this dimension to get Ulric. He explains that he jumped into a random dimension to try to get away from Ulric. The list he was looking at didn't have any ways of defining which dimensions where which. Ryan explains that is part of Ulric's plan to keep secret the only dimension found with actual magic. John explains how he has had a change of heart and has decided to help his friends. He has been slowly gaining back his memories since landing in the dimension four days ago. Ryan chides him for not using a dimensional stabilizer during the travel. Ryan says he blew up Ulric's beacon and portal to trap him in that dimension. He has his own beacon that was supposed to allow reinforcements to come help him when needed. Ryan thinks his beacon is being override by a larger, spare one Ulric must be using. John warns him that Quinn will be there in a few days to check on Ulric. Ryan plans to take over Ulric's spare beacon to call for backup. He has found that the magic in this dimension seems to be related to their own world. Ulric was able to get winning lottery numbers for their own world. Ryan asks for his help. John agrees since it is what he, Ealstan, and Sefawynn had been planning to do. He is a bit disappointed he has turned around his life just for Ryan to take over. He decides he can use that to fix his relationship with Sefawynn.

Back at the camp fire with the group, John tells his new friends that Ryan and his men are willing to help them on their mission. Ryan is a bit miffed by this and gets angrier as John keeps going on. He gets so frustrated that he ends up telling everyone that John wasn't ever able to finish anything. He ended up being a boxer that would throw fights while working for Ulric. While it achieved the desired affect, John is still hurt and goes out into the woods. The voice tells him the presence of people from his world hurts him and the wights. Sefawynn joins him after a little while and tells him it isn't safe in the dark. He tells her about the voice saying he is hurting the whights. When she asks, he admits that everything Ryan said was true. They now have common ground in being screw-ups.

*[[Venessa]] (mentioned only)