Frostbitten Wayfarer

Zoe looked at the papers she had strewn about her desk, notes on different experiments and patterns of mana to toy with. She felt like a mad scientist from some children’s movie somedays. Throwing random ideas that pop into her mind at the wall to see what sticks.

But it was fun. And it was never about being successful, it was about trying things. The trials that stuck were wonderful — new fans for her chimney, new thermal controls for her stove. But what really stuck out to her were the ones that didn’t.

The violent explosions that rocked her cave, the useless mana filled husks of worthless mana barely capable of blowing the papers around on her desk. It was exciting and fun.

For now, Zoe had a plan written down for Jeffrey’s going away present. In her time of practicing, she’d managed to fit in another two enchantments, which meant most of her enchantments had an Identify skill in them these days. Five skills was just so many options, and Zoe had begun wondering where the limit was.

Would there be a limit? Could she enchant something with every one of her skills, one day? A single gem containing every skill she could collect?

An issue she had begun to realize, however; was that her Enchanted Mirror didn’t support it. Or at least she couldn’t see a way to make it work. No matter how much she tried, three skills was the absolute limit for her Enchanted Mirror.

Maybe as it levelled, it would become more useful, more powerful. But even at level one forty two, the skill was stuck at only three. She hoped that once it got to one fifty, it would be able to support a fourth skill. But if it didn’t, then it might be time to get back to her roots and replace her Chrono Enchanter class.

It didn’t provide much for her these days anyway. Mana Manipulation was nice but Zoe suspected that if she got rid of it, she’d be able to get a general skill for it rather quick with all her studies and practice. She tried to upgrade Mana Manipulation to a general Mana skill at one point too, but the way it worked was so fundamentally different to what she was used to. Even different to the Space and Time skills that Eliza showed off whenever she stopped by.

Whereas Space and Time seemed to rely on themselves to warp mana around, Mana Manipulation almost seemed to not even have a pattern at all. After all, it was the manipulation of mana itself. How would you manipulate mana with mana? You were already manipulating mana at that point.

And the creation of mana? Zoe already created far more mana than she knew what to do with, what would be the point of creating even more? After a few weeks of studying the skill, she brushed it aside as being different to other manipulation skills and moved on.

Immaculate Enchantments was an absolute life changer, but whatever class she replaced Chrono Enchanter with would have its own version anyway. And Enchanted Mirror was beginning to fall off.

That left just the basic class effects, which were quite powerful she had to admit. Mana Sight was a powerful boon that made it possible at all for her to accumulate so many different elemental skills. The increased mana and regeneration were both incredible for her early on, but with all of her feats and new classes they just didn’t matter as much.

It was tempting to drop all the way back down to level twenty one and grab a new class. Zoe had a hunch that if she grabbed all the Seasoned variants, they would combine into one master class, too. If she was already planning to replace her Chrono Enchanter with something more powerful, then it was worth a shot if nothing else.

And the idea bounced around Zoe’s head as it brought up other possibilities. If the Seasoned variants would combine into one class, it wasn’t a huge jump for the Transcendent feats to do the same. Or hell, even the Slayer series of feats. How many could there be? If Zoe got all of them one day, would they combine into a Master Slayer feat, with even more powerful classes available?

She shook the thought off and returned to the sheet in front of her. The plan she had laid out was Wind, Restoration, Meditation, Enchanting, Identify. With so many skills that she could fit into each object now, she was able to add in some quality of life additions to her tools.

Restoration would help mend the gem if it ever ended up damaged, and Identify would label it so Jeffrey would never forget what it was.

Zoe giggled at the name she chose and started enchanting it. With so many skills now, enchanting an object took time and focus that reminded her of when she first started. Each bit of mana needed to be just right like a flimsy toy brick sculpture that would fall with the slightest breeze. If even one of the skills she was pressing into the gem was out of place then the whole thing would fail and Zoe would be left with a bundle of useless mana at best. And at worst, she’d be thankful for the icy armour that covered her body.

A few dozen seconds later, Zoe wiped a bead of sweat from her brow and identified the gem.

[Jeffrey’s Oxygen Tank]

She stored the gem away in her bracelet with his water spout and firestarter gems, then laid down on her bed. Jeffrey’s party wasn’t for another few days so she had some time to relax and work on other projects. Since she came back home, she’d gotten a lot done around her home.

Her library had bookshelves made, and she even had her books from John sitting on them now rather than taking up space in her bracelet. Soon, she intended to make a trip to another bookstore in town just to buy a few dozen books to fill out the rest of her shelves, but she was happy with how it looked.

She had travelled down to Gafoda to pick up some of the darker spruce like trees near them to build a dark wooden bookshelf that contrasted with the lighter red pine she used for her walls and floors. In time, she thought it might even be nice to replace the ceiling with the darker wood too.

Her enchanting workshop was finished, for now, with a walkway leading over to the nearby cave through the waterlogged tunnel for the more dangerous experiments. The cave was filled with rubble and detritus like a school yard after the fair, but it was separated from her home so she didn’t mind.

Her Earth doors that she made had their enchantments replaced with one of Earth, Meditation, Enchanting and Torrential Echo. Opening the doors and walking through the film of rushing white water rapids that filled in the space after they shrunk out of the way hadn’t gotten old yet, and she didn’t think it would.

If the echo left behind made her wet, then she thought it might. But it didn’t seem to have a corporeal form at all. Which made her think it was just a visual illusion, but it would be weird for an unrelated skill to have an illusory enchantment so she wasn’t sure what was happening with it.

Testing her Echo skills enchantments was on her ever growing list of things to do, but she didn’t see it providing any benefit to her home so other things kept getting bumped up. Fix her chimney, fix her chimney a different way, figure out a way to grow plants underground. Maybe make a garden outside. The list was endless, but Zoe liked it that way.

She always had something to do, always had something to keep her interested. Zoe closed her eyes as she rested on her pillow and drifted off to sleep.

Not an hour later, she was shaken awake by a violent earthquake. Her home creaked as the rock shook, wooden planks screaming from the vibrations. Zoe ran to her front door and opened the small peep hole she made right next to it. The trees outside were shaking, the bright green leaves fell and covered the ground.

She pushed mana into the door and it squished off to the side, leaving behind a torrent of water in its place. Zoe stepped outside and ran up the hill. Rocks tumbled around her as she climbed, pushed aside by her Earth skill.

In the distance, where Flester’s walls were once just visible over the tree’s canopies was billowing smoke and bright red flames that reached for the sky.

———————

Emma ran around her tower, gathering everything she needed. Her necklace stored everything important, but she had memories stuck in drawers, cat food piled up in the kitchen closet. The cats’ carriers were stuck in the back of her closet, and she struggled to bring them out and get them open.

Her mom slammed the tower door open and shouted. “We need to go! NOW!”

“I KNOW! I need to get the cats. Help me!” Emma shouted back.

Emma’s mom grabbed one of the carriers and ran off to find Oliver while Emma wrestled with Fennel to get him in the carrier. He scratched and hissed, but there was no time to be nice.

Another explosion crashed nearby, deafening Emma for a moment. She pushed Fennel into his carrier and tied the ropes off on the outside. “Got him! Is Oliver okay?” She shouted to her mom.

“Almost!” Emma’s mom’s voice sounded strained. “Okay! He’s in! Lets go! NOW!”

Emma stored away the last of the paperwork she needed and as much cat food as she could and then followed her mom outside and through the smoke. She summoned two translucent gray gems that Zoe gave her and stuffed them into the cat carriers to try and keep them from being overrun with smoke.

“This way!" Emma’s mom shouted.

“Where are we going?” Emma ran after her mom.

“The guardhouse! We’ll be safe there!” Emma’s mom shouted back.

“Are you sure?” Emma asked.

“No! But it’s the best we’ve got.” Emma’s mom shouted.

They ran through the streets, the buildings almost a blur as they leapt over fallen rubble and through alleys. Emma knew her mom could go even faster, could make it to the guardhouse in a moment. But the cats wouldn’t be okay at that speed, if she could even carry Emma and both the cats in the first place.

They passed dozens of people as they ran. Some standing outside their burning houses, begging for help. Others running in the same direction as them, some running away. A few were smashing into buildings and taking whatever they wished.

Minutes later, they arrived at the nearest guardhouse. Or where it should have been, at least. In its place was a smouldering pile of wood. A dozen bodies were left behind, crushed under burning wood. A lone pillar of stone stood in the corner with bits of rock tumbling off it.

“Shit!" Emma’s mom shouted. She looked at Emma and the two cats they were carrying and grimaced.

“I’m not abandoning them! I can’t do that.” Emma shouted back, tears dripping down her face.

“I know. I know, it’s okay. I’m not going to ask you to do that. Fuck.” Emma’s mom put Oliver down and ran around the destroyed guardhouse and rummaged through the rubble. She found a metal trapdoor and shoved a large burning wooden beam off it. Her fingers sizzled as she grabbed the wooden handle and threw it open.

Smoke billowed out from the basement and flames licked at her feet. She coughed and stepped back. “Shit.”

“What do we do?” Emma asked. The cats were hissing, the town was destroyed. Everything was gone.

“Fuck. Lets try another guardhouse, maybe somewhere survived.” Emma’s mom said.

A man running past stopped next to them. “None of the guardhouses survived. They’re all gone.”

“Every one?” Emma’s mom asked.

The man nodded.

“Shit. Do you know what’s happening?" Emma’s mom asked.

The man shook his head. A woman appeared next to him. “Fire elemental’s attacking.”

“Fuck, another elemental? We just had the frost elemental what ten years ago? Fifteen?" The man asked.

She nodded her head. “It’s higher level, too. Doesn’t look good.”

“Shit.” The man said. “Where’s it coming from? Can we escape?"

“Southeast,” the woman said. “Should be fine to leave north, as long as it doesn’t continue that direction.”

A swarm of flames fell from the sky around them, and formed into dark blue marked Fire Elementals, around the mid one forties.

The woman vanished as quick as she came, and the man shouted. “Shit! Good luck ladies.” He ran off to the north.

Emma and her mom followed behind. The fire elementals shot off bursts of flame that the two dodged between. The odd flame burned into Emma’s side as she stopped it from hitting Fennel’s cage, and they soon were past the swarm of fire elementals.

“We can go to Zoe’s!” Emma shouted at her mom.

“Where’s that?” Emma’s mom shouted back.

“It’s at a hill north east, I’ll lead the way.” Emma said and took the lead. They left the city, and continued running towards Zoe’s home.

——————

Zoe ran down the hill and took off towards Flester. Was Emma okay? Was Joe okay? What happened? If she felt the rumblings this far away, then how intense would they be so close? Would anybody have survived? Would Flester even still be there? Could she even accomplish anything if she went there now?

None of that mattered. She needed to know what was happening, she needed to know if she could help out. She wasn’t the weak level eight she was last time Flester was attacked, she could handle herself now.

A few minutes after running through the forest, she saw Emma and her mom in the distance, each carrying a cloth wrapping at their side. Zoe waved at them.

“What happened?” Zoe asked.

Emma’s face was covered in tears, her eyes red from from emotion. “It. We. Everything.” She stuttered.

“Fire elemental attacked.” Emma’s mom said. “Emma said you live near here?”

Zoe nodded and showed them to the door. “Yeah, right through here. You can stay as long as you need. Fire elemental attacked? Is Joe okay, do you know?"

Emma shook her head as she walked through the Torrential Echo left behind by Zoe’s door.

“We barely got out, I’m sorry. I don’t know where your friend is.” Emma’s mom answered.

“Okay, thanks. You can stay here. Just push mana into the stone and it’ll open the doors. The water’s fake, kinda. Don’t touch anything upstairs, that’s my enchanting workshop.” Zoe said and ran off back towards Flester.