A clearing among the trees, old stumps still visible littered among the grass. Its centerpiece was, surprisingly enough, a small log cabin. It was built from roughly-hewn logs and even had a latrine out back, sure, but it was still miles above a tent. Small stones were embedded in the ground in a continuous line surrounding the cabin, rough glyphs carved into each one.

Stepping over the line felt to Zelsys like pushing through an immaterial membrane that offered momentary resistance before it let her through, though the others didn’t seem to take it so well, with both Zefaris and Strolvath shivering for a moment after they crossed.

By this point, even Zelsys was beginning to feel the exhaustion of a continuous march, in no small part because she hadn’t bothered to drink any of her Vitamax ration over the course of the trek, having mentally checked out for the bulk of it. She felt a tangible dryness in her throat, but after she tasted the Grekurian drink she made the choice to partake of fresh water straight from the hand pump.

Liquid Vigor already tasted aggressively herbal, but Vitamax was something else. It didn’t just slam into her sinuses with the powerful flavors and fragrances of Viriditas, but she could also taste several other herbs and some sort of sour bitterness, probably from whatever spirit was used to supply the elixir’s ethanol. Decisively unpleasant.

To the hand-cranked pump she went, and out the spout ice-cold mineral water came. Whilst she was busy quenching her thirst the others entered the cabin, and Strolvath soon peeked out the door asking her to, “Bring some wood from out back, wouldya?”

She gave a thumbs-up with her free hand, still downing gulp after gulp, sucking down small sips of Vitamax to replenish her strength and washing it away with water. It was just about bearable this way. A few minutes later, she had used her cleaver instead of the cabin’s rusty old axe to chop four logs into pieces of varying sizes from tinder for starting the fire to chunks for maintaining it.

Once in the cabin, she slowly and cautiously waded around the center of the room, peeking out from behind the obstruction of her burden to see Strolvath holding open a hatch in the floor whilst Zefaris had climbed into the hole and was retrieving what looked to be food components like dried fish and long-lasting vegetables.

Once she offloaded the wood next to the rusted cast-iron stove, Zel took a good look around at the place they would sleep for the night. A single room, one table with three chairs, and what looked to be four beds up against one wall. Well… Bed was perhaps a generous term. They were more-so wide benches with straw and pelts for padding.

The table held a few dusty wooden bowls, though its standout feature was a forged iron candle-holder still crusted with wax, though instead of a candle it now housed a milky-white quartz crystal. Its glow was weak, and when Zefaris noticed her looking at it, she remarked “Start the fire, if you don’t mind. And toss the lightgem on the edge while you’re at it so it can recharge, just make sure it doesn’t turn orange.”

“What, will it explode?” Zel asked half-jokingly, plucking the gemstone out of its mount as she walked to the stove. She looked to retrieve flint and steel or some other ignition source from Fog Storage, but it didn’t show up in the list. Scrolling through it up and down proved successful when she came upon it under the letter I.

x84 Ikesian Survival Sparker

A single one would be enough. The strange name was mostly justified - it wasn’t flint and steel, but rather a piece of bent metal with a tiny, malformed Ignis crystal in one end. The other end could be plucked and made to strike the crystal, producing sparks much like regular flint and steel would, only in a much greater quantity.

Even with this superior ignition source, the kindling wouldn’t catch - the wood was damp. In an attempt to brute-force it, she took her powder horn and poured a pinch of powder in her hand, tossing it into the small tower of kindling she’d built within the stove. A single spark was enough to send a gout of flame back at her, such that it would have scorched off the hair on her arms if she had any.

Quickly, she added more kindling and soon enough had a spitting, sizzling fire going.

Strol took over the stove from that point, rinsing out one of the copper pots that sat atop it to use for soup. A half-hour later, Zel fished the re-charged lightgem out of the embers and set it into its holder, setting it on the ground by her “bed”. Despite the searing heat, the gem itself was barely more than warm to the touch, even as it blazed with light as bright as any candle. Another half-hour passed, and the soup was done. Salty and fishy, heavily spiced to mask the funk of dried cod, filled with carrots that had gone floppy and potatoes that had long sprouted by the time they got here. Still, it was good - a testament to Strolvath’s skill in making the best out of lackluster rations.

As Zel ate her second portion, the impending storm finally came, with curtains of rain and raging thunder slamming the forest. The lightning diffused through the clouds in a strange way that lit up the night sky in its entirety, the brief flashes bright enough to rival daylight. Yet, they were safe. The cabin wasn’t particularly well insulated, it had no lightning rod, but not a drop of rain struck the roof, or even the soil around the cabin.

When she peered out the window, Zelsys saw an outline of the protective field that surrounded the cabin, outlined in rainwater and Fog. The glyphs carved into the stones glowed brightly, Fog rising from them continuously as their magic worked to deter that which was not welcome.

A lightning bolt struck the dome, only to be sent careening into the treeline by the invisible force. One of the smaller stones cracked and its glyph flickered, but the field held even as thunder raged above.