I lay on my back, staring at the dark ceiling of the shelter I'd found myself in. The window shutters had been closed before the place had been abandoned, so the only significant source of light was the big hole in the corner of the wall, lending a gloomy atmosphere to the abandoned building. The sagging roof looked even worse from inside: some of the beams looked as if they would snap at any second, but I'd just have to risk being buried alive by this rotting house; I had no chance of finding another place before I'd freeze to death. I sighed loudly: this wasn't exactly what people usually had in mind when they thought about being chosen as a hero to save the world. My soaked-through clothing was stuck to the dusty, warped floorboards and now that I'd had time to rest for a few minutes, I once again felt the grip of the freezing cold take hold of my body. Not even the thought of falling asleep like this felt particularly inviting, despite my aching muscles and tired mind.
Trying to come up with the strength to get up and find a warmer part of the house, I looked around. Luckily, the gloomy lighting was no match for my elven eyesight, and so the room appeared before me as if lit up by the sun on a cloudy day. There wasn't much to write home about - not that anybody would read my letters anyways: a broken down table and a few warped wooden chairs stood in one corner, stacked up by whomever had left this place long ago. The rest of the room was entirely empty; likely, somebody had moved out everything of importance back when the wall had collapsed. At least that's what I told myself, hoping the rest of the former home would hold anything I could use to warm myself up to some extent.
Groaning, I turned to my stomach and pushed myself to my knees with great effort. My cloak came unstuck from the floor with a wet sound, taking with it a small layer of dust. I stood and brushed myself off quickly. I still looked like I'd spent the last month living in a fox den, covered in mud, dust and all sorts of things I didn't really want to talk about. Anything below my tattered cloak was most concerning however, due to the liberal amounts of blood still soaking through the fine and colourful fabrics. First priority: get warmed up and recover. Second priority: find inconspicuous clothing. I sighed, stretched my arms once again and made myself to the door at the end of the room. Looking at the sturdy wooden planks, I suddenly had a bad feeling that I knew how this would end. And indeed, a quick tug at the rusted handle confirmed it: the door was very much locked.
I sighed heavily; things just couldn't ever be easy it seemed. While, as one of the greater sorcerers of my time, I could most definitely get this puny old lock open, the process wasn't exactly straight-forward. For once, my mental reserves were fried from the excessive drug-induced healing and the prior exhausting fight. Secondly, lockpicking using sorcery is a particularly difficult process at the best of times. I'd had to do it on a few occasions before this, luckily, but due to the nature of the field of force magic, it was a rather time consuming endeavor. Usually it would be far easier to just blow the door up, or cut the bolt holding it closed. Now that would be assuming you had a sufficient well of power to draw from, which was decidedly not the case for me at this time. I hunched down to get a closer look at the keyhole, thankfully being able to get a good view at the mechanism due to my elven heritage.
At least it seemed like I had sufficient room to play with, and the mechanism didn't seem overly complicated. As long as the mechanism hadn't fully seized due to the generous amounts of rust, I should be able to do this with minimal effort. I straightened myself up again, leaned against the door and put one hand against the keyhole. Sending out a glowing white tendril of magical energy allowed me to slowly get a more accurate idea of what I was working with: all I needed to do, was to apply some rotational force to a specific part of the mechanism, and the door should open. It would require some precise casting, but it could be done, even in my current state. At least I hoped so. I let the magic dissolve into a fine mist and slumped against the door, clutching my head. Even this small exertion had given me the mother of all headaches.
It took a few minutes of waiting there, shivering in the cold, before I felt like I could move again. I once more put one hand on top of the keyhole - minimizing the casting distance in order to save on the consumption of magical energy. With a slight mental effort, I summoned a tiny rectangular shape of pure energy inside the keyhole, where I estimated the mechanism to be, and gave it a good push on one side. And with a slight click of moving metal... absolutely nothing happened. Well, nothing happened except for my head feeling like somebody had stomped on it yet again. I gave it another few minutes and tried again, figuring I'd just missed the mechanism; this was a rather precise undertaking after all, and the constant shivering and my general weakness didn't help the matter in the slightest.
The second attempt proved as fruitless as the first, and so did the third and fourth. The most infuriating part was how little feedback I received from my failed attempts. The force shape spell didn't provide me with any information about anything it touched, after all. At least I was reasonably confident I'd found the mechanism with my spell. Perhaps I wasn't using enough force? Judging by the headache I'd received after my most recent attempt, this would surely be pure agony, but I couldn't see a better way forward: and so I tried again, only putting in a lot more energy this time.
On the positive side: after a short attempt at resistance, the seized lock gave off a loud scraping sound, and then a tentative *click*. On the negative side: I barely noticed it through the terrible hammering behind my forehead. I slumped to the floor and lay my head between my hands. It felt about as bad as I'd expected, which is to say: it felt absolutely terrible. I think I might have briefly passed out at this point, and it took a while before I managed to heavy myself off the floor again. While my head still throbbed something terrible, I managed to give the door handle a quick tug, finally letting it swing open. I felt very little triumph at the loud creak and the groaning of the door's long forgotten hinges. Without hesitation, I stumbled through the doorway and closed the cursed thing behind me.
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Inside, it might've felt marginally warmer, but not by much, if at all. I would need fire to have any hope of seeing the next day. And for this, my best bet would certainly be to find a kitchen and hope the previous owners had left sufficient fuel to keep a fire going for a while.
I scanned the room I was currently in: a small corridor with several doors and a rickety railing guarding a staircase to the floor below. The single window had its shutters closed tightly, and everything smelled of rotten wood and years worth of dust. I figured my best chances of finding the kitchen, and its oven, would be down there. So I carefully made my way to the top of the stairs and let one foot descend to the topmost step. It creaked fiercely, and the layers of dust almost made me sneeze, but luckily the construction held. Carefully, I took a step down and was rewarded with another creak. I took my time, but eventually managed to arrive at the bottom floor without incident, though my muscles ached like hell for every step.
The ground floor looked much like above: a slightly larger corridor, with several doors leading to other parts of the house. The floor here held an even thicker layer of dust, and my bare feet left a wet, muddy trail of footprints behind wherever I stepped. I tried the first door to my right, and luckily it was unlocked. The loud creak sounded more ominous down here where the sounds of the rain were far more muffled. I gave the room a quick once over, but the darkened interior revealed little of interest beyond the large cloud of dust I'd caused to explode into the air. An old bedframe without a mattress, a rickety table and stool, and a wardrobe with its doors opened and quite clearly emptied of anything it might've once held.
Opening the next door, I found a similar room, except this bed was larger, and still held a lumpy old mattress and a cover that looked thick enough. Instead of the wardrobe, there was a big wooden chest at the foot of the bed. On the table I found a few empty and quite dusty glass bottles. It seems, somebody had lived here for a while longer and hadn't bothered or managed to empty out this room after they'd left. I really hoped I wouldn't stumble over a body in one of the other rooms. I waited for the dust to fully settle before I made my way over to the wooden chest. It, too, was covered in a thick layer of dust. Opening it with a loud creak revealed, aside from yet more dust, a few old clothes: simple shirts, pants and a brown felt hat with several holes in it.
Beggars can't be choosers, and so I quickly took off my wet and dirty clothes and flung them in the corner. I hurriedly went over the selection of clothes before me, so as to evade the freezing cold air as soon as possible. I chose an off-white shirt and some cheap black linen pants to go with it. The shirt was far too small and almost left my belly exposed, while the sleeves didn't make it all the way to my wrists. The pants, meanwhile, fit decently well: they'd probably been a bit too wide for their previous owner, which was lucky for me. I saved the belt from my pile of discarded clothes and put it on, after giving it a quick wipe down with a clean corner of my old shirt. It was still dirty, but good enough for now. To top off my new outfit, I put on two pairs of thick woolen socks from the chest before me and took the hat with me, tying it to my belt by the old string it was attached to.
A quick wipe over the bed cover once again agitated a cloud of dust, and I had to spend a good minute just coughing and waiting for the dust to settle. Without the layer of dust though, I could finally wrap the newly uncovered quilt around me. It smelled moldy and the edges were frayed here and there, but it was thick and had barely any holes. It would help keep me warm and that was all that counted; I already felt a bit better.
Leaving the room again, I crossed the hallway once again and tried the only door on the other side. At first, it refused to budge, but when I put some strength into pushing it open, it slowly came unstuck. With a loud creak and then a thud, the door suddenly opened inward, flinging me stumbling into the room with it. I just about managed to keep my footing and gave the room a quick scan: an old cooking oven sat on the other side of the room, stocked with a decent amount of dusty logs of wood, leaves and branches one could use as tinder. I almost teared up at the sight: this house felt like the lucky break I needed after all those recent hardships. I didn't pay much attention to the rest of the room: a boarded up window barely covered in cracked glass panes, a sturdy looking table with some much less sturdy looking chairs, and some empty shelves. Still clutching the old quilt around my body, I hurried over to the oven and knelt before it, reverently, looking as if in prayer. It felt that way, too, considering how terribly cold I still was.
I carefully opened the oven's small hatch, when sudden movement from the metal contraption caught my warrior's eyes. I flung myself back, losing my quilt in the process, and crawled backward for my life. I scanned my surprise attacker with trained elven eyes, and quickly sagged in relief: it was just a slightly overgrown brown spider, crawling down the oven and scurrying for a nearby crack in the wall. I shook my head at my overreaction and quickly covered myself with my newly acquired quilt to take a closer look at the - now hopefully uninhabited - oven.
It was certainly as dusty as the rest of this place, and covered in a layer of old soot and the spider's webbing. I was unsure how safe it would be to light a fire in the old contraption like this, and so I quickly gathered my wet shirt from the other room and began the process of cleaning the stone and metal surfaces that were most at risk of catching fire. A few minutes later, the worst had been cleaned up.
I quickly stacked some tinder and small pieces of wood in the oven's interior. A tiny magically created spark of flame was enough to ignite the dry tinder, along with another light headache. Rearranging the tinder a few times, blowing on it all the while, and finally stacking some bigger logs on top of the small flame, and finally: I had a fire going. I left the oven door open, ignoring the smoke starting to intrude into my new home and making my eyes water. The fire felt heavenly, and nothing could pull me from this small piece of warmth, relaxation and hope.