Rose was in the middle of trying to develop a fire ball attack, when out of the corner of her eye she saw a black blur speeding towards Emily. Knowing she wouldn’t reach her in time, Rose ran towards Emily anyway. As Rose ran desperately at her daughter, she saw the black blur get there first and pounce on Emily, taking her down to the ground and covering her completely.

Rose finally reached Emily, only to hear giggles coming out from underneath a huge cat. Skidding to stop, Rose called Emily’s name out questioningly. With some effort Emily pushed the over-excited cat off her and stood up. Emily didn’t speak to Rose instead she turned back to the cat, speaking to the cat as if it was answering her back.

“But, Socks is a good name, what’s wrong with it?” Emily stopped for a moment as if listening to the cat’s reply, “fine, fine, I’ll introduce you” finally turning to a gobsmacked Rose, who had been joined by the rest of the gang by this point, and saying “ This is Casara, she chose the name so don’t blame me, I wanted something cute but nooo. Anyway, this weird screen says she is my bonded companion and that means I can keep her right?”

Rose honestly didn’t know what to do, other than say that Emily could keep the strange cat. Her identify skill showed that the massive cat was called a shadow panther, Casara was already level 5 so Rose felt better knowing that Emily had a powerful protector that wouldn’t leave her side.

Leah finally reached the group, she went to ask Rose what had happened but fell silent again as she watched Emily and Alexia playing with the new addition to the family. After a couple of minutes stood around watching the two girls play, she turned to Rose and showed her the flower petals she had found, explaining what had happened and the new skills she had thanks to it. Leah went on to say,

“I got a prompt telling me that turning the petals into a paste with water would help heal wounds and restore health, there are a couple of spare jars with the food so I am going to go and experiment as see what happens.”

With that, Leah walked back inside. After a while it began to get dark, so Rose took the young girls inside and got them tucked up in their camp beds, Casara followed and placed her massive body between the camp beds and the door to the rom they were in, she would make an excellent guard for them.

Heading back down the stairs, Rose found the others sat in the main room on the first floor, sipping hot drinks A cup of tea sat, ready for her, beside the only unoccupied cushion out of the ones that they were using as seats. Rose joined the conversation as they were speaking about what still needed to be done.

“There is a huge list of things we need to make this place more liveable, I mean, this is fine in the short term but we need proper beds, bedding, furniture and a whole host of other things to make this place more comfortable.” Leah was saying.

Jon added, “ We need to get it defensible first, we need proper doors shutters at least for the windows. We also need more people, we can’t defend this place on our own. Also, toilet seats. Those holes that used to be used are incredibly uncomfortable. We are going to need to keep on top of the waste, it lands in a trench down the side of the keep, its not exactly sanitary but it will have to do for now.”

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Rose said, “I agree with both of you, tomorrow I want to go on another scavenging hunt for more food, getting beds here shouldn’t be difficult, there’s a store that sells beds not too far away, if we can find flat packed ones we can load them onto the pump truck and bring them back. Might take a few trips to get enough for all of us though.”

Having come up with the start of a plan, they sat and brainstormed for a little while before Rose, Liam and Jon headed off to their camp beds for the night. Leah went to the room that they were storing the food in and thought about what they could do to keep the food fresher for longer, they could preserve a lot of food if they could do it quickly, but best of all would be finding a way to keep this room much colder than it was. As she stood there thinking, she shivered. The temperature in the room had dropped since she had walked in and only seemed to be getting colder.

Rubbing her arm, Leah looked around the room again only to see the walls covered in frost. All of a sudden, Leah felt incredibly tired, as she collapsed she saw a prompt appear in her vision,

New skill learned - Freeze - Uses a steady stream of essence to freeze moisture in the air, can be used to lower the temperature in a room and will last as long as the ice doesn't come into contact with any heat.

Leah was cold and tired but perked up slightly when she realised she had solved the food storage problem, thinking it would be good to surprise everyone in the morning, she went to bed.

The next day everyone was up bright and early for breakfast, Liam had taken his outside to eat whilst everyone else was sat in the main room. Leah was in the middle of telling everyone about her discovery last night, explaining how useful her new skill would be for storing food, she was essentially able to turn a whole room into a freezer, and as long as they kept the door shut she would only have to redo the freeze every few days. They were about to go have a look at the room when Liam came running back inside.

“You guys need to come outside, there’s some people coming through the arch into the courtyard.” He said.

Rose and Jon led the way outside, sure enough there were four people coming towards them, two adult females and two teenagers, boy and girl but the boy looked older. The slightly older woman stepped forward and began introducing them.

“Hi, I’m Lily and this is my partner Emma, this is James and Bethany, children from previous relationships obviously. James was outside of the bed and breakfast when he saw you guys walking this way, we hadn’t seen any other people since that weird wave set all this chaos off. We thought we would see if we could join you guys, the more people we find the better, right?”

Bethany spoke up, “ I was doing a project on Scarborough castle for school, that’s why we are here. But the keep was a ruin when we came to see it the other day, how did you guys fix it so quickly? Can I come see inside?”

Emma shushed the young girl and then looked back at Rose, waiting for an answer.

Rose asked them to give her a minute to speak with the rest of her group, Turning round to them, she saw that she didn’t even need to ask, they would let this little family join theirs and they would be stronger for it. Turning back to the new comers she told them that they were more than welcome to stay, she explained that there was still lots to do to make the keep safe and comfortable but with the extra hands it should go much faster.

As soon as they had all agreed that Lily and her family could join them, a prompt appeared for Rose,

Settlement interface unlocked! -Your settlement has reached the minimum population, enter your keep to access the interface.