As Tristan and I looked around the space that I called home, early morning sun just peeking over the horizon, water dripping from everything after last night’s rain, I realised that at some point, probably during all that wood cutting, I had picked up more new stats than I had expected. I noticed with interest, as I glanced down the list of skills, that my companion didn’t seem to notice the text floating there at all, as though only I could see my own skills. I assumed he was bringing up a similar page now and then, detailing all his useful cookery options.

  Name: Amber

  Species: Feliform

  Hearth Mage - Level 4 (XP 112)

  Health 12/12 - Stamina 12/12 - Mana 15/15

  Skills:

  Plant Identification: 3

  Material Crafting (Foraged): 2

  Woodworking: 2

  Abilities:

  Rest - Create a comfortable resting place for yourself. Sleeping here recovers stats at twice the usual rate.

  Home Hearth - The fireplace at the centre of your Home, grants bonuses to your Abilities and those of your family within its radius

  Ability Points: 3

  Craftable Items - See full list for details of all unlocked Items

  It looked like I had enough Ability Points to unlock a couple of new useful things, I certainly had my eye on that Basic Shelter option, if it meant what I was reasonably sure it meant, given all the magically appearing items I could conjure up now.

  For the moment, I wanted to put that all off and spend some time with Tristan, who was making some vague gestures and comments towards maybe heading off home soon. I brushed off his suggestion that I head into town with him this morning, even if I wasn’t still a little nervous about the place, I had so much to do here. Another day spent not improving my skills was another night I’d have to wait before I had a proper place to stay. At the rate I was starting to pick up all these exciting and useful new abilities, I was eager to see what came next.

  So, we said our goodbyes, he promised to come back and visit again soon, and I insisted that next time it be during the day. Then, after walking with him the short trek back to the roadside, waving as he disappeared down the side of the hill, I got to work. First thing, I needed that new Basic Shelter ability.

  As expected, up came a message listing all the new items I could make, variations on walls and roof, all needing me to go and fetch a load of new material. Well, luckily I had a whole lot of wood left out, it was soaking wet after last night’s rain, but I was sure the magic at work here wouldn’t mind all that much. Then it was just a case of harvesting various plants. And a few more for breakfast while I worked, as I realised I’d barely eaten since getting back from the woodcutting trip.

  “This had better work.” I said to the haphazardly assembled heap of random stuff. It didn’t seem like it should, but I was the 4th level Mage here, so if anyone was going to manage a complicated seeming spell, or whatever this was.

  Putting my focus into my newly gained Ability, I was impressed to see that it did actually work. At least, the magic I called upon was able to create a bunch of walls, though not actually connected to each other in a structure. All scattered around at random, in different directions, one toppled over into a nearby bush, another leant against its neighbour and threatened to tip both onto the ground. At least none of them were intersecting through each other like some odd gaming glitch. I had burnt through basically all of my greatly enhanced, high level Mana, but it was worth it. Actually picking up and moving and assembling each piece of the building would have to be done by hand, but that wasn’t so difficult, if I didn’t mind getting a bit dirty where I was digging spaces to plant the bases of each wall, and then cover them over in the wet mud again. I had to stop myself wiping my hands clean on my new clothes at least twice as this went on, instincts were too powerful of a thing, even without any other of my memories.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  And just like that, I had a big, rectangular space fenced off, room enough to pace around in. No windows, so the light only filtered in through the tiny gaps between the leaves and woven branches, and through the massive hole where the roof needed to go, of course. No door, so I had to just leave a gap and hope the wind didn’t blow any rain right in through it.

  Satisfied with the morning’s work, I took a short trip to the stream to wash off properly, then flopped down on the bed with a nice view of the construction in progress.

  Recovering all of my lost Mana took a bit longer than I had hoped, but the counter kept ticking slowly upward while I watched and waited. With some time to spare, I tried roughly pacing out how far outward this claimed radius around my Hearthfire was. Looking back over the area, it seemed a reasonable sized space, but compared to how far I had to travel to collect wood or gather in food, now that I had eaten most of the plants I could identify close to home, I could see the open, mostly featureless landscape spreading out to the horizon all around. Not that it would benefit me much to own all that landscape, but given the possibility that my newfound abilities wouldn’t work if I travelled anywhere away from my fireplace, having a good long range on that, out as far as where I needed to go, would be helpful.

  For now, though, I needed to finish work. I still had a roof to construct, or at least magically conjure into existence. Luckily, I still had plenty enough wood left over, for the small scale of building I was going for first time. Less luckily, it turned out managing to drag, almost carry, and try to lift the resulting assemblage of branches, twigs, leaves, knotted plant stems, and whatever else was mixed in between them, into place was somewhat more of a challenge than willing it into existence had been.

  Not that there was any need to rush, I could shuffle it around a little bit, rest, look at it from a different angle, move it a bit further, and eventually have the whole lot precariously balanced on top of my slightly wobbly walls and lack of a door. It didn’t fall over, yet, which was good enough for me for now. Some of the branches sort of slotted into spaces that would hold it more steady, but not nearly as neatly as each individual part was made. Hopefully I could learn to do something about that in the future, but now was not the time for complaining and looking at the flaws in my abilities. In only a few days here, I had already built myself a house. I had just enough Mana points left to re-summon my bed, which appeared freshly made and cleaned, into the back corner of the new building, then carried the rest of my stuff over and set it up around the place.

  I wanted to rest here for a while, just enjoying the view of these four small, tightly enclosing, windowless walls made of flimsy sticks and bits of plants, but I had one more plan in mind I wanted to get to before I forgot. With one last look back at home, I trekked out in what I hoped was the right direction, and sure enough with a bit of searching around managed to find where I had left the stream.

  I followed its course on a bit further, as it wound and looped around, toward the gently falling hillside ahead, as I had noticed that further down it ran a good deal deeper and faster than the little trickle I’d first stumbled into. Here, some way out from home, until I could barely make out the place in the distance, was a proper watercourse. I took a deep breath, hoping my idea worked, and activated the Channel Redirection ability.

  It took a bit of trial and error, but after a time, I found that I could place a hand or two on the ground next to the stream, and through some considerable strain and concentration, cause the ground to change shape just enough for part of the flow to spill through the surrounding plantlife and into a shallow pool. Every moment of the process was a lot more of a struggle than I had started to get used to with my ability to just pop things into existence as I wanted, and my Mana score, only recently mostly refreshed, dropped rapidly. I could see my Stamina rating tumbling downward as well. I wasn’t entirely sure whether it was those numbers draining out of me that had me feeling worn out, or just the effort of pushing my willpower into causing this latest new change to the landscape. As I stopped to rest, job only part way done, I realised this might well be the effect of using my abilities outside of the home area. Was this how I would feel any time I took more than a few steps away from that little campfire? Is this what it would be like if I went down to the town and had reason to create anything while there? As I worked, slowly shaping this stream into what I wanted, one struggle after another, I pictured a future where this whole endeavour didn’t work out and I had to take a regular job, maybe at Tristan’s sister’s shop, where however hard I worked, every level gained and new skill unlocked wouldn’t help me keep up with everyone else.

  No, I pushed those thoughts aside. I had built an entire small home for myself, had collected food and water, and had forced the land to bend to my will even where it didn’t want to, forming a fresh, clean, clear pool of water deep enough that I couldn’t wade into it for fear of getting my clothes wet. It may have taken hours, but I had built the closest thing to a bathtub I had seen in as long as I could remember.