Not thinking about it was easier than trying to convince herself of something, so she threw herself into her next task. Armed with her tea, she braved the creek again, walking quietly under Stealth to collect more plants. Thunder Sorrel, Vineroot, and Dreamweed lined her pockets along with handfuls of other interesting plants her higher level Forage reinforced by her new Herbal Concocting identified.
There was no time to worry about how the skill could affect her if she was busy keeping her eyes out for monsters and searching for the plants which would be the difference between dying of starvation or disease and survival.
When she brought them back, she threw herself into further camp improvements. She dumped another round of Focus into creating her stone roof, then used Elemental Manipulation to make herself a crude axe. She scurried back to the creek bed and chopped down the reedy Palis Typha she’d found growing in the shallow water. They were soft and springy. She laid them over the floor of her shelter for better cushioning and insulation from the cold ground.
Set Camp has increased to level 3.
It would be a better mat if she lashed them together, wouldn’t it? Maybe it would be a good idea to give that another try? Something complicated like a chair was too much for her to figure out on her own, but she understood the concepts of weaving well enough to apply it to this, didn’t she?
Her hands moved with precision and confidence she didn’t possess, easily weaving the reeds into a narrow mat. An effect of Set Camp, she supposed?
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. She needed this. She did not want to wake up with hypothermia again.
She wanted to wake up tomorrow morning.
She didn’t loiter on her new bed. There was more she could do. There had to be something more she could do.
A wall, maybe?
Atmospheric Sense promised that the boulder kept most of the wind off of her and between that and her roof, that would do a lot to keep the heat of her fire around her even as night fell around her, but if she had a wall opposite her or to either side, wouldn’t that be better? She’d need to leave space immediately around the fire so the smoke could still escape, but...
She was already up again, her axe in hand. There was a copse of young trees she’d seen on the far side of the creek with straight and narrow trunks. If she cut them down, she could tie them together and lean them against her roof to create a wall.
It was both harder and easier than she’d expected. She’d imagined cutting them down with ease and then dragging them back one at a time with some difficulty. That’s how it would have gone for Earth Cass with a real axe.
However, her stone axe was not a particularly effective tool. It took a lot of tries to get the stone blade to cut and a few modifications to the cutting edge with Elemental Manipulation.
But once down, Cass was surprised at how easily she lifted and carried them. It was her nearly doubled Strength stat, she realized. She was almost twice as strong as Earth Cass had been.
She shook the thought aside. She could reflect later. Right now there was work to do. She carried them back and stripped them of their branches before lashing them together with her vines into wide pallets. She leaned it against her boulder roof and moved some of the loose stone to the base to brace it in place.
She sat down and got another mug of tea. The sky was darkening above her. Either the day was ending or the storm was about to worsen. Atmospheric Sense promised it was the first.
She was as prepared for the elements as she could hope to be. Her shelter was like night and day from last night. She had plenty of firewood. She had shelter. She had a sleeping mat.
She would be fine.
She sipped her tea, watching the forest over her fire. The dark woods grew darker still as the light faded, even the bioluminescence of the magic plants fading with day until it was a dark and formless mass.
Her hands gripped a little tighter around the teacup. There was nothing out there that could hurt her.
How often had she said as much back on Earth while staring into the dark? It had been true as a child scurrying from her bedroom to the bathroom in the dark of night, long after her parents had already gone to bed. It had been true as a college freshman, walking out from her eight p.m. class to the bus after lecture, the eerie quiet of campus after dark pressing in on all sides. It had been true on Earth.
She knew it wasn’t true here. She’d seen the things lurking in the forest. She couldn’t make herself arrogant enough to think she was safe here.
She took another sip of her tea, letting the warmth wash over her. Embracing the calm the dreamweed instilled in her. Choosing not to think about the monsters certainly lurking just out of sight.
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After all, she had been in the area for more than 24 hours now. If there was something that wanted to eat her, it could have easily done so last night while she was ravaged by the poison and hypothermia. Maybe there was something out there, but maybe there wasn’t.
She didn’t have anything she could do about it, so it was best to let it go. She added “the potential of giant, Cass-eating monster” to the pile of things to not think about.
She broke a shoot off of her Queen Fallhel’s Collar and bit off a chunk. It tasted unpleasantly like celery and root beer had been fused, but it was still better than the potato so she kept eating it.
Night had fallen properly over the valley. The sky darkened to an inky black. Cass couldn’t see an inch beyond the light of her fire. The world beyond her camp could have dissolved into the aether and she wouldn’t know.
She looked away from the dark, focusing on the fire before her. The flames danced happily, unaware they were all that separated Cass from complete despair. They crackled, feeding on the wood. A calming sound.
She closed her eyes and she was back with her siblings. If she opened them, she’d find herself in her camp chair, a book in her lap, Robin walking over with a pair of marshmallows on a skewer for each of them. Kaye’d be prodding the fire with a big stick, fussing over air flows and hot spots and whether there were enough logs on the pile.
Cass would ask what the plan for tomorrow was. Robin would name a trailhead. Kaye would ask if they could actually hike it tomorrow or if Cass planned on bringing her flower identification guide again and stopping every three feet to consult it on another plant. Cass would indignantly protest that characterization, but wouldn’t have any intention of removing the book from her day pack.
Cass would take a marshmallow skewer from Robin, and he’d push another into Kaye’s hands. The three of them would eat their way through an entire bag of marshmallows before letting the fire burn low and turning in for the evening. Her hands would be sticky and sweet from the marshmallow oozing over them.
She would not have a chance to read her book, she’d be too busy laughing with the other two. The night would be cold, but it was so warm there beside them.
She opened her eyes, her heart aching. Of course, she wasn’t back. She was still sitting in her makeshift shelter. Still sick.
Still alone.
***
The next three days were hellish. She spent them coughing and sneezing and dying of a fever. Her Medicinal Tea was perhaps the only reason her fever didn’t kill her outright.
On the fourth day, Cass woke up feeling better than she had in days.
Stamina: 27/27
Focus: 117/117
Health: 24/24
Status Effects:
[- Beginner Reward: Bonus Staff Skill Growth
- Beginner Reward: Bonus Wll Skill Growth]
Cass sat up, stretching experimentally. No stiffness, no soreness, no headache. The wounds from her first day here were gone, not even a trace of a scar anywhere, not even over her shoulder where the terrorcat had taken a big bite out of.
Magic. Amazing.
She poked her fire and forced herself to eat another vineroot potato. She’d run out of the other vegetables she’d found. She hadn’t once felt hungry since she’d arrived, which must be the stress suppressing her appetite. If finals in school were enough to do it, it was hardly surprising life or death survival would do the same.
As she chewed the unappetizing root, she considered her next move.
Staying here was out of the question. She had no interest in setting up a permanent home out here.
Cass glanced up at the sky. It was the same as ever, but eventually, those clouds would break, pouring their contents on anything and everything below. She wanted more substantial cover when that happened, and this cliffside just wasn’t it.
But, if she left, where did she go?
She’d spent as much time as she could watching the forest below her cliff for signs of people. So far there was no indication there was another sentient being in this whole forest.
She could try to find her way back to the summoning circles. Maybe there was a hint as to how to use them to send her home there. Maybe there were people who maintained them who would pass by and help her.
The only problem was she had no idea how to get back to them. Follow the creek upstream, and then what? She hadn’t followed anything in particular from the cliffs to the clearing where she’d fought the terrorcat or when she’d fled the clearing and the giant badger. She had very little confidence she could find her way back.
And then there were her quests.
Beginner Quest (4): Slay the Lord of the Pass
Beginner Quest (5): Slay the Lord of the Forest
Beginner Quest (6): Slay the Lord of the Deep
She frowned at the quests. They didn’t feel like “beginner” quests to her. They sounded much more like boss monsters, and really not like something she should be trying to beat at level 4, never mind she had no idea where to find these monsters in the first place.
She was at a loss. She was alone without direction, and she was doing everything she could not to curl up in a ball and collapse under the strain of it all.
She needed an objective. Something more immediate than “Get home”. Something more achievable than “Find people”. Something more concrete than “Survive”.
But she didn’t have even an inkling of what she should be doing.
Cass stared out over the forest below her from her ridge.
The forest was dangerous, but not as dangerous as she had first thought. Yes, there were monsters here. The Lordling was still far above her level. The terrorcat had nearly killed her. But she’d hidden successfully from the Lordling and the terrorcat had died instead. Better yet, she had seen nothing more dangerous than small rodents since camping on the ridge top, suggesting the real beasts had their own territories and were not omnipresent.
She gripped her staff tightly, making her decision. She would start by exploring the ridge. She’d follow it as far as she could and see where it took her. Staying up here would give her a view of the forest below giving her a better chance to spot people if they existed. Better, the wind blew steady across the ridge, she’d follow it, and if she ran into trouble Wind Step would get her out of it faster up here than in the denser forest behind her.
“Explore the Forest” wasn’t significantly more concrete than her other goals, but it felt more achievable. And she needed a win.
She could do this. She would survive. She would get home.