Frostbitten Wayfarer

Living together in Zoe’s cave was hectic for the first few months while everybody got adjusted. Zoe never expected to be housing nine people and two cats in it, so they were all packed in like ants in an anthill. The cave was dark and cold, and getting some semblance of normalcy out of their living situation was a nightmare.

For the first few days, there was a hint of hope that kept everybody together. Flester would survive, they could move back in and rebuild. Jeffrey would have a job, Joe’s inn would come back and everybody could get back to their normal lives. Zoe built small lanterns from some orange gems enchanted with Fire, and shrouds of stone that hung from her walls and lit up the cave in a flickering orange-yellow light.

But the fire in Flester continued spreading, and on the third day when the plumes of smoke began to dissipate their hopes were shattered. In the southeast of Flester was a towering inferno that slid across the distant city like a snail crossing the street. The group stood at the top of Zoe’s hill and watched it on its devastating journey north-west.

In its wake was a raging forest fire, and the group could do nothing more than hope that whoever was next in its path would be better off than Flester was. Maybe it would be weakened when it reached wherever it was going, maybe it would just burn away in a puff of smoke.

The days following Flester’s final destruction were grim. Motivations were at an all time low as people mourned the loss of their homes and families. Nora left the day after to Korna where Emma’s dad should have been working at the moment to fill him in, and to stock up on enough cat food to last them a while.

She offered to take anybody who was interested with her to Korna, but nobody took her up on the offer. Emma needed to stay to take care of her cats, Joe was worried about Kenzie and Sue, and the other three didn’t want to leave Joe alone. By herself, she promised to be back in about two weeks with more information from Emma’s dad and the situation in Korna.

Everybody had the Fire skill, thanks to Zoe’s trapped fire elemental, but nobody seemed keen to play with it. Kenzie and Sue did little more than sleep in Zoe’s library. Peter and Lauren spent most of their time up the top of the hill staring out over at the ruined Flester in the distance. Jeffrey was outside with Joe, distracting themselves with Zoe’s pile of logs.

Joe seemed interested in building a small building outside Zoe’s cave, just large enough to qualify as an inn. Most of his skills were predicated on working in an inn, and Zoe’s cave just wasn’t enough for it. His defensive abilities, cooking abilities, even the storage ability he had were inaccessible to him when he didn’t have an inn.

Most of the stuff that was important to him he kept in a storage item, but his Warehouse skill was filled with food and paperwork that he cared about. Zoe told him he was free to use the wood as he liked, and was even eager to help out at times.

Emma had taken to distracting herself with hunting and gathering food. With her high levels and helpful skills, she provided more than enough food for everybody to eat. Venison and boar, with plentiful vegetables from nearby. She even started a small garden outside Zoe’s cave and bits of green had begun poking out from the dirt.

The cats did alright adjusting to the cave, though they were a bit nervous of all the people they now shared their home with. Oliver spent most of his time upstairs in Zoe’s enchanting room that she tidied up, while Fennel hid away under Zoe’s bed or tables if he wasn’t following Emma around begging for attention.

Zoe spent most of her time in the ruins of Flester, digging through rubble and clearing out the smaller Elementals that looked to be having a grand old time hopping around the charred remains. Very few buildings remained standing at all in Flester. The towering trees that were Kaira library stood, blackened from the flames that were still licking at their branches. The only building that survived without damage was a peculiar bookstore near the south-west of town.

She smiled as she looked at the endless voids in the window and the glowing black book on the front door, untouched by the catastrophe that devastated the rest of the town. Maybe one day he’d come back and help fix things. Or maybe he’d be gone so long that another town rose up in Flester’s place, and he’d never even notice that anything happened.

Zoe shook her head. Would she ever get to that point? It seemed likely, even already she noticed time flying past her before she even realized anything happened. Where would she be in another thousand years? Would she waste away hundreds of years at a time and not even notice the world changing around her?

It almost seemed sad, in a way. John liked interesting stories, and he just happened to miss one by being lost in whatever adventure he went on when his store was closed.

In a way, she was almost thankful that it was a fire elemental that attacked. In her search for anything salvageable she found an abundance of corpses, but none were more than black, charred bones. She knew they were more than just black skeletons created by a dungeon. That they were once real, living people who wandered through Flester. They ran shops, maybe even cooked food that Zoe once ate.

But she couldn’t help think of them as more of the same black skeletons she’d found thousands of times on Moaning Point. The thought of Flester falling to a cold elemental instead, and running into dozens of frozen, preserved bodies with fear plastered on their faces sent a shiver through Zoe.

Most of her searching was fruitless. Restaurants burnt to a crisp, furniture stores turned to piles of ash. But some of the city survived, and she stored away anything useful in her bracelets. A large cauldron from an alchemist’s shop that burnt down. Metal weapons and armour from a few blacksmiths she found. A few small beds from some of the houses that managed to survive the destruction, and she even found a fabric store with some surviving bolts of cloth that could be used as makeshift blankets.

Her last stop was Kaira library. She left everything she didn’t need in her bracelets back home so she’d have space to store as many books as she could get her hands on. The enchantments might have been damaged, or even possibly all of the books could have burnt down. But if anything survived, she wanted to preserve it as best she could.

The towering trees around the park had all been charred by the elemental passing through. Their canopies were missing and sunlight poked through the blackened branches. All of the entrances were blocked by piles of stone, and Zoe looked at them with a little confusion. The trees were, well, wood. The ground around the trees was dirt, scorched from the heat. Even the nearby buildings were made of either wood or crystal. There was no way for stone to have naturally fallen into place to cover the entrances of the library.

Which meant somebody put it there, Zoe realized. Were people still inside? She ripped the stones away from the entrance with her Earth skill and stepped back as smoke rushed out of the now opened hole.

If anybody was inside, Zoe hoped the smoke didn’t reach to the bottom of the library’s roots so they could still be alive. She walked in, filling a small space around her head with air from her Wind skill, then used Gales to create a powerful gust that pushed out through the entrance she opened. Smoke was pulled along with it and Zoe heard nearby objects clatter from the rushing winds.

It took almost ten minutes, and an enormous amount of mana before the level Zoe was at cleared up of smoke. Above her, the dense smoke still filled the tree, but it seemed it didn’t get too far below ground level yet at least. She ran to each of the other trees and repeated the process, ripping the stones away and pushing as much of the smoke out as she could.

In the last tree, she heard something different. Footsteps from far below, and hushed voices whispering to each other. The magical platform that led Zoe around the library in its heyday was gone, as were the floating bookshelves that Zoe spent so much time browsing through.

She peered over the edge, into the trees roots. There was a small fire at the bottom, with a dozen people sitting around it.

Zoe leapt off and wrapped herself in Earth as she fell. Just after she floated to the ground, she pulled the earth back into her to reclaim some of its mana. The group of people around the fire looked over at her as she approached them with fear and anxiety seeming to overwhelm them. They looked ragged and worn from their time in the bottom. The two kids were leaning into what Zoe assumed, or hoped, was their mother on the other side of the fire.

“I’m here to help. Is anybody hurt?” Zoe looked around. They had makeshift beds made from destroyed bookshelves, and had some kind of dough resting on a metal sheet next to the fire baking.

“No we’re not hurt. Is it done?” The woman closest to Zoe said.

Zoe nodded. “The elemental’s gone.”

“Is Flester safe?" A younger man asked.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

A few of the people started crying, while others tried to comfort them. “I hoped one of the guards would show up and tell us everything was okay.” The woman said, leaning her head back.

“I’m sorry. The town’s mostly cleared out now and you should be safe to leave, but…” Zoe shook her head. “There’s not much left.”

The woman nodded. “Thank you.”

“Mhm. I’m not really used to dealing with this kind of stuff so did you need anything else from me? Food? Water? Help getting out?” Zoe asked.

“Water, if you have it. Please.” The woman said.

“Sure, do you have a container or something? I don’t have any on me but I can create water.” Zoe said.

The woman nodded and summoned a few large metal pots that Zoe filled with water. The people looked relieved as they drank from them, and thanked Zoe.

“And if you don’t mind, a way out would be nice.” The woman said.

“Sure, I can probably only do three or four of you at a time, though.” Zoe answered.

The group chatted, and decided on the order Zoe would take them up in. First would be the three highest levels, then the two kids and their mother. And then the remaining order didn’t matter so they’d just line up when Zoe came back down.

Everybody thanked Zoe when she brought them to the top, and a flurry of emotions danced across Zoe’s Vampyric Empathy as they looked out over the destruction. Happiness to being out of the dark tree roots, despair at seeing the city so ravaged. Relief again from seeing the sky, quickly replaced by depression. Zoe knew the feeling, having been through it herself days prior.

They talked about what they planned to do and decided on heading for Korna. They had enough high levels to keep them safe on the journey as long as nothing terrible attacked them, and enough stored away in their storage items to try and start a new life there.

Zoe thought of inviting them to her place to get their feet back on the ground, but decided against it. There were already too many people living at her place, and once Joe’s makeshift inn was up they might be able to house and feed everybody, but she had no idea how long it would take to be ready for so many more people. Or if it would even be large enough to support another dozen people ever.

If they had plans to make a new life in Korna, then Zoe had no plans to stop them. She said her goodbyes and refused their offer of payment, then jumped back into the tree roots to rummage around for books that could be salvaged.

From what Zoe could see, it looked like the magic that kept the bookshelves floating just stopped working and they all plummeted to the depths. The wood was splintered and shattered, books thrown around on the ground and stabbed through with stray shards of wood. Some of the books were ripped apart and crumpled to make a somewhat more comfortable surface to lay on, a few were still burning away in the fire that had been lit.

Many of the books — hundreds, if not even thousands, looked to have survived with minimal damage. A few torn pages, a dented cover or ripped spine. She wandered through the roots and stored away every still readable book she could in her bracelet and then left. There were too many piled on top of each other to find ones that were useful.

Even before when the library was functional, there didn’t seem to be much organization to them. Each bookshelf had a theme, but a bookshelf about government systems might have floated next to one of gardening. When the tower of books collapsed onto the ground, the already barely organized mess of books was tossed around like a bowl of literal word salad.

Maybe when she had time some day — or some years, she’d come back and rummage through everything. Put them all in a proper place with organization, even try and remember how the dewey decimal system worked and revolutionize the world’s organization of knowledge. But the amount of work it would require was incredible.

Just making it through one of the trees alone would take her weeks, if not months. Let alone getting through every one of the connected trees.

When she got back outside, Zoe wrapped herself in earth then flew up to the still burning flames at the treetops and doused them with Torrents. She looked over the city with a sigh, then flew off back home. Joe’s makeshift inn would be done in a few days, Nora would be back not long after and they’d have to figure out what they were going to do for the long term.