I woke up well rested, though a little sore from sleeping on stone. I'd carved out a small alcove in the stone and dirt a few steps up from the lowest step and made a small area for a fire. Which had burned down to embers over the night and wasn't providing any light.

The air was still nicely warm, and there was a dripping sound coming from somewhere. I lit my torch to find a trickle of water flowing down my stairs, and drips coming from the ceiling. The lowest step was a two meter by three meter area, and it was full of water up to the second step and rising. It would have reached my alcove and woken me within an hour, at least.

Heading up my stairs I realised I had another problem. I had sealed the stairs by placing slabs of rock over them, and without a significant source of heat I couldn't move them. I hadn't brought any extra wood down before I had gone to bed, I'd just built the fire and gone to sleep. Standing on an upper step with my back on the stone above I tried to lift it with my legs and it didn't budge.

Reaching out for heat sources I found that I was quite close to the bonfire, but it wasn't putting out much heat. The stone itself was warm, and I could pull from that too. Pulling from everything I could reach I managed to fill the stone slab above me with my power. It would take less energy to move it than it would to break it apart, so I started to push upwards. My torch flickered and dimmed, and I could feel the heat being sucked away from everything around me. But the stone was moving. My torch went out just as a gap started to form at the edge and I changed the direction I was pushing. Snow fell down onto me and the stairs as the slab tilted. Draining the last of the energy available I gave the slab a final push and felt it settle on top of the slab further along the roof.

The air was bitterly cold as I climbed out of what had nearly become my tomb, and it was still the pitch black dark of an overcast night in the middle of a forest. The bonfire was completely extinguished, the embers gone cold when I drew the last of their heat away.

I carefully made my way towards the edge of the raised platform at the top of my stairs, making my way to where I remembered leaving some branches and leaves that didn't go into the bonfire. Moving away from the fire pit the snow rose to knee height before I found a solid branch by tripping over it, falling face first into the snow. Standing up and dusting myself off, I grabbed the branch and focused my body heat into it. I had a much better idea of what I was doing now compared to when I first arrived and easily set it alight.

It was snowing heavily, limiting how far I could see. The snow was half a meter deep everywhere except the fire pit and the stone slabs over my stairs. I had to set a tree on fire to get enough energy to start chopping trees down, but after the first one I just needed to keep a log with me to burn. As I went about the process of rebuilding my bonfire, stacking long lengths of tree against each other, I thought on the short term projects I wanted to do.

I was absolutely filthy, so a bath has to be near the top of my list. Which would also help with the soreness I was feeling from sleeping on stone. A proper bed or comfortable reclining chair would also help on that front.

Chantelle still seems to be fine, still roughly ten kilometers away, but going to see her is definitely on the list. As is creating an entrance to my Pocket Dimension. Having a backup supply of wood down my stairs occurred to me as I was finishing preparing the bonfire, so I started collecting more wood for that. Though what I really need is a portable energy source.

I lit the bonfire and used its energy to rearrange the entrance to the stairs, leaving it open to the sky for now. Going down the stairs I picked up my torch from where I had dropped it and relit it.

The water on my stairs came up to just below the dirt portion, leaving it about a meter deep, and the water had stopped coming down the stairs as the stone slabs cooled enough to stop melting the snow falling on them. I stepped one foot into it, and while it wasn't frozen it was quite cold. It was easily deep enough for a bath, if I could heat it.

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It was too far away from my bonfire to heat it that way effectively, so I was back to the problem of a portable energy source.

The limitation of how much heat I can put into something is when it will catch on fire. It was a property I was using to generate extra heat with the wood by burning it as fuel. But what if I used stone. It should take a fantastic amount of heat before it caught fire. Although it would melt at a certain point.

I scooped out an orb of stone from the bedrock and with a bit of effort manipulating it came away with a polished grey and black orb ten centimeters wide.

Taking the orb up to the surface I pulled the entire output of heat from my bonfire and focused it in the center of the orb. The entire orb started to heat up quickly, so I split my attention and took the heat from the outer shell of the orb and redirected it back into the center. The orb cooled down to the touch, and the best part was that I wasn't losing any heat. None of the heat I was putting into the orb was ending up anywhere but in the orb. I assumed there was a tiny loss in moving the heat the few centimeters back to the center, but I couldn't sense it.

I split my attention into a third activity and flared the bonfire, pushing all of the excess heat it was generating into the orb. I burned the entire bonfire, that would have lasted hours, in a matter of minutes. With the dying light of the bonfire, and my torch, I went to cut down more trees. I preferred to have a backup source of energy, with what happened earlier.

Using the orb as an energy source was incredibly easy, drawing on a very small portion of its energy I was able to cut the trees into sections and push them into their place on the bonfire.

With the bonfire built back up and able to burn for hours, I headed back down to my waiting bath. Placing my torch into the wall I heated the water hot enough to steam and sank into it fully clothed. Ducking my head under the water I slipped out of my robe. I found that I couldn't pull the dirt and mud directly from my skin or robe, but once it was in the water I could clear it from that. I took the time until the water went cold scrubbing myself all over and wringing the dirt and water out of my robe. Then I reheated the water for a good long soak, enjoying the simple pleasure of being clean.

After the water went cold again I walked up the steps enough to start to dry. The water had risen another step, and was now at the level of the dirt walls. I wasn't sure how they would stand up to being immersed for long periods.

Soaking my power into the water was even easier than doing dirt, and I soon had the entire stairway dry. I dumped the water off the edge of the platform on the opposite side to the bonfire. The amount of energy I needed to use to stay warm was going up, and I realised I'd come out into the arctic winter night without my robe.

Heading back downstairs I considered my robe. It was past time that I got some underwear, and the number of times I'd trodden on something sharp under the snow called for some sort of footwear as well. The underwear was a simple matter of growing more cloth in the appropriate shape, although it did drain a good chunk of the energy stored in the orb. The shoes were trickier, as I didn't have access to any leather. I ended up making thick cloth strips that I wove through a wooden sole before wrapping around my feet, merging the ends into each other.

Putting my robe back on I felt much better prepared to be going outside. There was still water trickling down my stairs as the snow above met the warm air inside and melted. It was easy enough to push it back out again, but I set out to seal it properly.

Starting from the bottom I cut out more stone to replace the dirt walls up to the surface. I found that I could make seamless stone by forcing two pieces of stone together and fusing them where they met. I made the walls thick enough to support the building I wanted to build at the surface.

At the surface I raised the walls up to give a proper roof over the stairs and formed an entry room at the top. I stored a stockpile of wood in the entry room, and an unfused heavy slab of stone as the door.

I'd just finished with the door when I noticed that it was getting light enough to see outside. I'd been awake for hours, so unless I slept a lot less than I felt, the days here must be really short.

I stepped out into the clearing and turned back to look at what I'd built. An ugly short stone building, six meters wide and ten meters long, on top of a two meter raised dirt platform, and next to a six meter wide, six meter tall bonfire. I was basking in my sense of satisfaction over my achievement when I was interrupted by a spike of concern over my connection to Chantelle.