We sat back down at the dirt table I had created and ate our muffin dinner while I thought.

The shelter I had built was five or six kilometers in a straight line in the opposite direction Chantelle had come in. Which I had lost track of in building my bonfire. But we weren't far from the Arachne maze, so we should be able to find that, and that was the direction we wanted to go in. Though I most definitely wanted to go around the Arachne.

"I have a compass," Chantelle told me when I told her my plan. "And I know what direction you were from the village. Though in the dark, with the snow, we could easily walk right past it, especially because we are detouring around the Arachne maze. I don't think I can travel at night, either, it gets too cold away from a fire without any wards."

I moved over to sit next to her again and put my arm around her shoulders and she leaned into me. I couldn't push heat directly into her like I could myself, but I found that I could push heat into her clothes.

"There, that should keep you warm." I said. "I'll have to stay close, though."

She smelled wonderful. I felt a flash of desire that I quickly suppressed. Chantelle gasped and I felt a flash of desire from her over our connection. I stood up with a cough, and stepped back over to my seat, leaving the table of dirt between us.

"Sorry," I said, though whether for starting it or stopping it I wasn't sure.

Chantelle felt hurt quickly followed by shame and embarrassment, so I sent her my feelings of acceptance of her and desire for her, though in a more intellectual form. This Chosen Person connection allowed us to have a very deep conversation in moments without any misunderstanding, reacting to each other's feelings. But it lacked being able to communicate specific thoughts, so when I felt her feel confused I said aloud.

"This isn't the place." I said. "We're in the open in a forest right next to the Arachne."

She nodded. "And we're next to a huge open fire, which will draw the Forest Keepers." She said.

"... What are the Forest Keepers?" I asked.

"Either sentient monkeys, or barbarian elves, depending on who you ask." She said. "They look after the forest, which includes putting out any fires. It's why the forest is so old even though it contains trees that are full of flammable oil. Our village had a ward that kept them out."

"I didn't see them." I said. "And I had a fire burning almost since I got here."

"Maybe they're less active now that it has gotten so cold." She said. "Or they track people in the forest and your being summoned means they didn't see you?"

"Oh, I left a bonfire burning next to my shelter." I said. "If we can get above the tree tops maybe we will be able to see the light from it reflected on the clouds. I will have to build the bonfire here up, but I think I can limit how much actual fire there is."

"I have a small mana crystal." She said. "I could build a ward against the Forest Keepers. It would only run for a few minutes, though."

"Better to save it." I said.

I set about chopping and adding a dozen trees to the bonfire. After that was done I pulled hard on its heat, pushing it back in to burn the entire bonfire as quickly as possible. I was able to keep the flames quite small, but the temperature dropped a lot as well. Every few minutes I would rest my hand on Chantelle's back to sink heat into her clothes.

The trees here had tops that were forty or so meters above the ground, and if the bedrock was the same distance down here as in my clearing I would hit stone before I got enough dirt to make the stairway I was picturing. The process of digging out a stairway down went much faster than when I did my first stairs, having a store of energy in my hand made a huge difference.

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I started the stairs at the edge of the gap I had made in the forest when I chopped down the trees for my bonfire, pointing in a straight line to the right of a tree. I piled the dirt I was excavating around my chosen tree, and when I got to stone I did the same. I would need a large stockpile of stone close to hand.

My reach was extended by the sheer size of the energy I had available in my orb, but energy usage went up exponentially with distance away from me. I was just about to start building my stairway with the tree as its central column when I realised that it wasn't a good idea. I needed an outer wall of stone to keep my stairs up. And if I was going to be using stone anyway, I should use it for the central column.

At this point I had about as much built up as back at the clearing, but I'd already decided on the clearing as being home. I wasn't going to abandon it. I had spent time making it look nice for Chantelle. Plus, I could see some of the ice ropes the Arachne used through the trees from where I was standing and it wouldn't do to have our home so close to them.

I ended up building a cylindrical tower next to the tree. It took several trips into the earth to get more stone, Chantelle staying close by to light my way with her light stone and so I could fill her clothing with heat every minute or so.

I noticed the cold more now that I had to frequently stop to keep her warm. It was automatic for me now to push more heat into my body where it was needed as it was needed. We did nearly get distracted a few times. I was very aware of her curves while I was pushing heat into her clothing. But I finally had the tower finished and we climbed the last few stairs to the platform at the top, a good ten meters above the tree tops.

Chantelle didn't even need to get out her compass. It was dark in every direction, even though it had stopped snowing for the moment. When Chantelle held up her light stone the bottom of the clouds were only a few meters above us. Looking back down into the forest I noticed a swarm of lights heading towards us across what must have been the tops of the trees.

They were still some distance away, far enough to make some preparations.

We went back down the stairs and back into the earth to get more stone. On the first trip I used the stone to build a small room on top of the platform at the top of the tower. On the second trip I cut down the tree next to the tower, making a stockpile of wood in the room, and then used stone to fill in the stairs at the bottom of the tower, fusing the stone together.

I couldn't see how anything could break through the several meters of stone to get into the tower. Then I made the room at the top of the tower comfortably warm. I made an opening in one of the walls to find the lights, and the creatures carrying them, had arrived.

They were making quite a lot of noise, but the thick stone had blocked it out. They had long pointed ears, mostly human faces, and prehensile tails. They used their hands, feet, and tails to hold onto the branches at the tops of the trees around the tower.

"Those are Forest Keepers?" I asked Chantelle.

"That's them." She confirmed. "I've never seen them so angry before."

"Why are they so angry? The fire is out." I said. "Oh. Forest Keepers. They don't like people cutting down the trees?"

"I guess not." Chantelle said, shaking her head. "We never had any real trouble with them. They would harass people who went beyond the wards and into the forest, but all of our logging was within our wards. I didn't interact with them at all."

One of the Forest Keepers pointed a long finger at me and a moment later a jet of water flew from him and hit me in the chest, knocking me back. It hit hard enough to bruise, and would probably be lethal if I didn't have a way to warm myself. But then, just being outside right now would be lethal without being able to stay warm in some way.

"Ow." I said. "They can use magic?"

Chantelle nodded. "That's how they put out fires, water magic."

I closed the hole in the wall and considered our options. We could wait them out... As I thought that I felt a shudder go through the tower. Spreading my power through the stone I could feel a chunk of the wall missing five meters down on the side the Forest Keepers had arrived from. Waiting them out wasn't an option.

"Can you set up your ward against them?" I asked Chantelle. "I think I may know a way out of here."

"I can." She said. "It will only hold for a few minutes. And it will be an inverted dome twenty meters wide, they will still be able to attack the tower further down if they figure that out."

"Do it." I said.

I outlined a one meter wide by two meter tall doorway in the wall, raising the stone around it by five centimeters to form a frame. Then I focused on carving the symbols for my Pocket Dimension into the border. I could feel it working as it took more energy to carve, carving in the Pocket Dimension at the same time.

It would take much longer for me to finish than Chantelle could buy me, but I was gambling on the Keepers needing more time to knock a hole they could get through in my tower than I needed to finish.

"The ward is down." Chantelle said a few minutes later.

A few minutes after that I heard hooting coming up the stairs, the Keepers had broken in. I was almost done, thirty seconds more at most. I pulled stone down from the roof of the room and packed it into the stairs and went back to work. There was a flash of light when I finished, and the doorway was suddenly a doorway into a dark place. I grabbed Chantelle's hand and pulled her through.