Frostbitten Wayfarer

Zoe spent the next few days wandering around the hill, peering into every cave and wondering about a name she could call it that was better than just ‘the hill.’ Her first thought was Whispering Mound, and she giggled to herself. Her own little Moaning Point just for herself.

Not that she planned to stay for very long, anyway. Once she explored all the nooks and crannies, she wanted to go wander somewhere else and find something else exciting. She’d come back of course, keep chipping away at her little home away from home and make something she could be proud of. Maybe one day she’d master her enchantments and have some privacy or protections.

The hill was larger than she expected it to be. The little tunnel she dug through didn’t cut straight through the entire thing, just scraped along the side out of view from her cave. If she dug it perpendicular, she could get a much shorter chimney which might be a better idea at some point.

The smoke and ash rising up through the tunnel would come back to bite her someday if she didn’t do something about it. It would build up along the tunnel, mix with water that seeped in through the earth and eventually make its way back down to her cave. It wasn’t the most pressing of problems, but it was something she’d have to be aware of at least.

Caves and holes littered the hill as she walked around the base of it. Some dug deep into the earth, others cut into the hill and led to their own exciting mysteries. She hadn’t delved into any of them, just wanting to put together a bit of a map to know what she was working with.

The forest was peaceful, though the more aggressive boars and wolves didn’t tend to avoid the area like they did years before. She still hadn’t seen a wolf, but had seen the odd track while she wandered around, and found plenty of boar tracks. Even a couple of boars that she killed and stored away in her bracelet for food.

There were some edible plants in the area — mostly root vegetables and seeds from the trees that were buried in the snow. But she also found a couple trees with bright red fruits hanging from their branches. At first she thought they were apples and reached out to grab one, and was surprised to feel a somewhat furry, tight texture similar to a kiwi.

Zoe pulled one off and cut into it. The skin snapped like a balloon and smacked into her hand. The furs tightened up to stick into her hand like a cactus’ spines, and she ripped it out then healed herself.

The inner fruit was a faint, almost translucent pink colour and dripped with moisture. Zoe summoned a sheet of ice and placed the fruit down on it then stepped back. She summoned the longest katana she could and cut the fruit in half from as far away as she could stand.

There were no more surprises though, and her icy katana sliced all the way through. The center of the fruit was a darker, though still somewhat translucent red. She touched it, and it felt a little tougher, but not so tough that she wouldn’t be able to eat it.

She grabbed half of the fruit and took a bit from the softer looking pink exterior. The fruit’s juice exploded when she bit into it and coated her mouth in a slightly sticky but intensely sweet layer of slime. The texture was almost unpleasant, but the gelatinous slime melted into a thin liquid from her body heat and left a lingering taste of a field of flowers in her mouth.

Zoe stored a few of them away in her bracelet for later, though she’d need to find a safer way to cut into them. The taste was unusual but nice, and she might be able to make some desserts from the slime too.

The last place she wanted to check before she decided on what to do was climb to the top of her Talking-To-Your-Pets-Voice Bump and see if there was anything exciting at the top. It was quite a wide hill and took her several days just to wander around and see everything on the ground level, but it wasn’t all that tall. A few hours of walking and she’d be at the top, no problem.

She’d just left it for last because it seemed like the most fun to her. Zoe sat on her bed and ate some salted boar meat and a couple of roasted carrots then left her cave and started up the hill. The ascent was relaxing, a gentle incline full of trees. The odd deer or rabbit hopping around in the forest that thinned out as she approached the peak.

By the time she got to the top, the trees and animals had left her behind. The snow was pure and untouched by wildlife, the odd rock poked through to break up the perfect white covering, and Zoe took a moment to look around.

Forest as far as she could see in almost every direction. She could just see Flester’s tallest walls poking above the horizon and through the canopy off in the far south west, but other than that it was peaceful. She was alone up here, surrounded by nature and wildlife. Left to fend for herself and make her own way.

Zoe smiled and sat down to stare out at the forest for a while. The sun moved through the sky while flurries of snow came and covered her then left. It was peaceful just sitting out in the wilderness, not needing to worry about danger or mortality. It was freeing, and she was proud of herself for what she’d accomplished already.

She wasn’t the greatest fighter in the world, nor was she even approaching a noteworthy enchantress. But when Zoe arrived in this world and learned about it, what she wanted most was freedom. The ability to do what she wants, to explore on her own time. To not have to worry about politics and bureaucracy. And she’d done it, finally.

Zoe stood up and looked around at the peak of the hill and noticed what looked like a hole or maybe crater on the other side. She walked up towards it and found the temperature dropping rapidly as she approached it. Her fingertips and ears stung from the cold, and she checked her health. It was still full, so she wasn’t taking damage. Or it was so little that her natural regeneration outperformed it.

She kept walking towards it and found a massive cavern that extended deep into the earth. A cold gust rushed out from the hole and made her recoil.

Maybe it was a stupid idea. Maybe it was dangerous, maybe she should leave and find somewhere else to explore. But in that moment, Zoe decided that she needed to know what was causing the cold. What magics lurked below the surface, what creatures called a place so cold their home? What materials would be created in that kind of environment?

This was exactly the kind of adventure she wanted. It was cold, it was magical, it was exciting. But there was no immediate danger. She could see deep into the cavern, she could see the maze of tunnels that connected to it, feel the cold that spewed from the entrance. But there weren’t people hosting rituals, no screams of pain or roars from powerful creatures resounding through it.

This was just a cold cave, and if she was afraid of the cold she’d never get to experience something like this. She needed to know, she needed to see what it was about. But there were some preparations first.

The hole extended deep into the earth. The floor was hundreds of feet below her, she didn’t have enough rope to make that descent. She could try climbing along the walls, but the cavern was somewhat eggshell shaped and the hole just poked through the surface. In theory she could climb along the roof until she got to the walls and then down them, but that wasn’t a great option either.

And a single, simple rope that dangled from whatever she connected it to wouldn’t make her feel safe in there. If something went wrong, she didn’t want to rely on the rope not being cut or tearing as it rubbed up against something. Or a stray boar coming up and scratching it off whatever she tied it to.

No, she needed another entrance. She could carve into the hill with her Earth Manipulation to make an entrance, but if she started from the side of the hill it would take days, maybe even weeks to dig a hole big enough for her to walk through that stretched all the way to the cavern.

It was probably the best option though, so she’d make it work. But even after she did manage to get in, she’d need to have some way to close off her entrance so that the cold didn’t leak out and cause problems. Again, she could close it off manually each time with her Earth Manipulation, but that felt inelegant and a little impractical. If she couldn’t come up with another solution, she’d have to do it, but it wasn’t ideal.

In her downtime while she wasn’t digging through the ground, she’d work on her enchanting and try to find something that would help seal off the cold. Maybe her Earth Manipulation could help if she enchanted a stone door, or maybe her Vampyric Resistance would help keep the cold contained.

Another problem would be where she made the entrance. Her cave would be the most convenient, of course. But it made her more than a little uncomfortable with the idea. For that matter, she still hadn’t looked into where the water in her cave was coming from.

She decided that before anything else, she’d go for a swim and see where it led to. Zoe made her way back down and to her cave then stood in front of the chilly pool of water she’d been drinking from.

It felt odd, diving into her drinking water, if she was being honest. Like a kitten with a too big bowl of water. But it was better to know if she was connected to something dangerous than to leave it be, so she jumped in.

The water was chilly, but nothing compared to the intense cold that radiated from the cavern she’d found. Zoe took a deep breath and dove under the surface. There was a tunnel near the bottom, and she swam down to it to look at where it led.

The flooded tunnel continued down a little further and then turned right. Zoe was thankful for her Vampyric Senses — diving into this without being able to see in the dark would be a suicide mission. With her eyes, the danger was lessened, but she still needed to worry about getting caught in a stray current or ending up somewhere without any air to breath.

Zoe could hold her breath for almost two minutes if she needed to, she’d already done some diving in the past in pools just for fun. Of course, that would be shortened if she were stressed and exerting herself more, so maybe a minute at the max. If she couldn’t find the other side in thirty seconds, she’d turn back.

She didn’t have a good way to check if there were oxygen on the other side, so decided to bring along supplies to start a fire. If the fire burned, she had oxygen and would dump the twigs into the water to not burn away all of the oyxgen before she could look around. If it didn’t burn, she would rush back to safety and figure something else out.

Zoe double checked that she had her firestarter and a bundle of sticks in her bracelet, then took a deep breath and dove into the pool once more. This time, instead of the careful investigation she did the first time, she swam straight into the tunnel and around the corner. Ten seconds passed, and then twenty, as she kept following the tunnel.

Twenty five seconds passed, and she surfaced in another cavern. Zoe summoned her firestarter and bundle of twigs then ignited them. The twigs burned even without the help of her firestarter, and she kicked them into the water and took another breath. The air was noticeably colder, and much wetter.

Zoe focused on her Wind Manipulation to feel out any currents in the air, and felt a faint breeze coming in through some of the cracks in the walls. With there being oxygen in here, she felt it was a safe enough guess that it was fresh air blowing in. She’d be okay to explore a little, and looked around.

It was a similar looking cave to where she had set up her bed, but scaled down quite a bit. The ceiling was only a few feet above her head where she stood, and she’d need to almost crawl to fit near the walls.

A small river ran through the cave floor from the other side where there was a tiny waterfall from moisture that seeped through the dirt walls and ceiling. There were no big tunnels, no cave entrances. She felt good that her little home she’d been building didn’t have a tunnel leading to some horrible danger, and then swam back over. Maybe one day she’d even extend her cave over to the other one.

Zoe started up the fire and made herself some dinner. Strips of boar meat with onions caramelized in a slightly sweet, fruity oil that she’d purchased and a salad made of some colourful flowers and chopped nuts she’d found in the area.

For dessert, she wanted to have one of the sweet red fruits she’d found, without getting it stuck in her hand first. She created a plate of ice with a sharp spike on it with her Frost skill, then enchanted it with as much piercing effect as she could and rested it on the other side of the room.

Then she summoned a sphere of ice to surround the ball, with a small hole on one end that she could ram the spike through. The icy ball floated through the air and then she pressed the fruit into the spike. A sharp scratch echoed through her cave for a moment as the skin snapped open and scraped along the ice, then Zoe dissolved the icy sphere away to reveal the pale pink fruit beneath.

She grabbed the fruit and sat down on her bed to eat it. The slimy explosions in her mouth began to grow on her, and she stored the tougher core away in her bracelet. It was edible, but not particularly pleasant. Instead, Zoe was interested in trying to grow more of the trees if she could, though it didn’t feel very much like a seed, either.

Zoe shrugged and stood up. It was time to find a place to start digging her tunnel.