Cass didn’t know how long she lay there, listening to the distant thunder and the creek spilling over the cliff’s edge. She didn’t know what she was going to do next. There was no sign of civilization on the horizon. No obvious short-term goal to work toward.

The sky was only getting darker. Was it time to give up for the day? Try again tomorrow? Maybe an obvious city would spring up from the forest in the morning?

Cass wasn’t hopeful, but she could fantasize about it regardless.

With a groan, she rolled over and pushed herself back to her feet. She looked around the ridge. She could see the wind with Atmospheric Sense. Not the way she could see the trees and bushes around her, but she understood where it was strongest and how it traversed the hillside. There, to her left was a sheltered point, just below the lip of the ridge between a boulder and wide oak.

It was a far cry from her tent back on Earth, much less a building, but it was sheltered from the worst of the wind without returning to the dark of the forest behind her.

Now just add a cot and an all-weather sleeping bag and she’d be ready to sleep out under the stars. Cass sighed. She’d have to settle for hard ground and maybe a fire.

Cass paused at that thought. Could she make a fire without matches? She’d never tried before. Not since she was a child in scouts. And then, the adults had already prepped the string and stick and wood base. Also, it hadn’t worked. It's actually quite difficult to start a fire that way, and ten-year-old Cass had not had the patience or motivation to succeed.

Now, although Cass certainly had the motivation, she didn’t have any of the supplies for that either.

How else did one start a fire? Flint and steel?

She didn’t have either, but maybe flint and hard rock was good enough? And maybe she could find flint?

She tried identifying a rock at her feet experimentally.

Rock

[A rock.]

Cass scowled at the popup. Why so little information? Plants and animals gave her so much more.

She had no idea, but clearly, using Identify to pick out flint, if there even was any, wasn’t going to work.

She rubbed her face, exhaling deeply. Would she survive the night without a fire? Or would she just die of exposure?

The image of her freezing, huddled under the tree in the dark of night, her teeth chattering, her hands frostbitten, loomed unbidden accompanied by the thump of her heart in her chest.

Cass took another deep breath, settling the racing pulse and ignoring her pounding head. Step one for fire, Cass: collect wood for it.

Easy enough.

There was no shortage of dead wood, more than she expected to find, but perhaps that was the difference between untouched wilderness and the closely managed National Parks she was used to. She gathered several long fallen branches of varying sizes and dragged them back to her chosen camping spot.

Step 2: clear a spot for the fire.

Again, simple enough. The cliffside was dry and rocky. She shifted a few of the stones beside her boulder into a circle and kicked any loose detritus out of her makeshift pit.

Step 3: Fire.

Cass stared at the pit and her wood. She had not come up with a plan for this step in between realizing this was a problem and confronting it.

For the only time in her life, Cass wished she smoked. If she’d just had a lighter in her pocket, like Robin usually did, she’d be set.

She sighed and shook her head. It still hurt. She flipped up her current Focus and growled.

Focus 109/117

It was almost full! Why did it still feel like crap? If anything it had only gotten worse. The pressure behind her eyes had expanded to include the space between them, her temples, and her forehead.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

She leaned against the boulder behind her, closing her eyes. If only glaring at the wood would cause it to spontaneously combust.

Something twinged at the back of her mind. A quiet reminder of something. What was it?

Elemental Manipulation (lvl 1)

[Your understanding of magic is colored by its interaction with the elemental forces of the natural world. Through practice or divine intervention, you have learned to manipulate these forces at will.

Attune your Focus to an elemental force to summon and/or control that element.]

Cass squinted at the skill description, not sure why she’d pulled it up or why she was sure this was what she’d been looking for.

This was her reward for killing the terrorcat. Her one attempt to try it had been underwhelming. But if she could summon water with it, wouldn’t fire make just as much sense?

She piled a few of her branches in the center of her fire pit and held a hand over it, feeling just a little silly. She took a deep breath and willed fire to light beneath her palm.

The fire sprang to life an inch below her hand, floating freely between it and the wood. It flickered calmly, seemingly unperturbed to be floating in mid-air. It was hot, yet the flames licking her palm didn’t burn her skin. It was almost pleasant instead. Like a warm caress.

Cass shook herself, her Focus was dropping as she held it there. She needed to light the wood so she could release the skill again. She willed the fire to lower, but it didn’t move.

Cass scowled. She’d moved the water without too much trouble (beyond the Focus cost). What was different about fire? Something to experiment with later.

She moved her hand and found the fire followed the movement. She could work with that and pressed the flame down into the mass of wood.

It caught quickly, flames bursting up around her hand as her fire took root in the logs. Cass pulled her hand away with a yelp. Real fire stilled burned!

Cass shook her hand, wincing. It wasn’t actually burned yet, but the sudden pain had surprised her. It seemed she wasn’t fireproof, despite her Elemental Manipulation summoned flames barely touching her. Was it that her flames weren’t actually hot? But then how had the wood caught fire?

Cass stared into her campfire. It burned happily, gnawing hungrily at the branches at its base. She’d wanted it to catch fire, was it as simple as that? She wanted the wood to burn, but not her hand?

More experiments were needed.

She checked her Focus again.

Focus: 63/117

Cass winced. 40 something Focus for that. Experiments were expensive. She needed more Focus if she was going to get anywhere with them.

She shook her head. And how was she going to make that happen? Was she going to go hunt some monsters for another level? She snorted. Unlikely.

She’d be good and wait patiently for it to recover.

In the meantime, she put her sweet potatoes just inside the fire ring to cook. She didn’t know how long it would take, or if they were close enough, but it was better to get that started sooner than later.

In the meantime, she should see what she could do about shelter.

A distant memory about lashing vines and sticks to make furniture sprang up from an all but forgotten depths of her scouting days. She frowned down at the vines she’d left attached to her vineroot potatoes. They were fairly sturdy. It was an option.

She took a pair of sticks and the vine and started tying the one around the other two. It took all of five minutes for Cass to confirm she had no idea what she was doing.

What else could she do? How did animals survive outside at night? Thick fur? No standards? Nests or dens.

Could she build herself a little nest of fallen leaves? Just something to keep her off the bare ground? The ground was a major heat sink at night. That was the actual, important reason a sleeping mat was important when camping. That it was more comfortable was just an added bonus.

Cass spent the next half an hour or so collecting and piling up loose leaves beside her chosen boulder. She’d just pretend she was seven and playing with her siblings and it’d be fine. No need to think about any bugs that might be lurking in the leaf piles.

With a sigh, she settled into the pile, her back pressed against the boulder. The light was fading, the ash-grey sky darkening to charcoal, with only the occasional fork of lightning breaking the black.

Skill Earned: Setting Camp (lvl 1)

[The worst part of traveling is that you can’t sleep in your own bed. This skill will make that slightly less painful. Curate the comforts of home wherever you go!

Increased efficiency at setting up camps in wilderness settings.

Increased bonuses to staying at camps you set up or helped set up:

* Increased rest regeneration

* Increased bonus to stats of food prepared

* Increased bonus to stats of food eaten

* Increased comfort from sleeping arrangements

* Increased campfire efficiency]

Cass sat up at the notification. She’d gotten a skill? Why now and not earlier when she’d made the fire? Was her leaf nest good enough that the system noticed it?

Once again, she didn’t know. And, maybe, she didn’t care. She didn’t want any more weird skills sticking information in her head. She wasn’t looking to go find more of them.

Still, this one didn’t seem to have given her any knowledge. Nothing concrete enough that she could verbalize, at least. Not at level one.

She shook aside the thoughts. This was good. The effects included “increased rest regeneration” whatever that meant. She could only speculate on the specifics, but surely this had to do something for her less than full Health. She checked it again:

Health: 6/24

It had finally gone up a point. Was that from sitting here at her camp, the effect of this new skill already at work, or something else entirely?

Again–still–Cass didn’t know.