I awoke at dawn to a light drizzle and immediately set out to town. I ascended the landslide by my camp, figuring the gentler slope made up for the time it would take to traverse all the way around the rim of the valley. As I climbed, I realized I hadn’t found any sort of a path out of the valley from the previous inhabitants.

How did they travel, if not by road? Air? Did they have portals, like the Empire? Then again, if they could carve out this entire valley, they might have just tunneled through the mountains. I’ll keep an eye out, anyway.

It took two and a half days, but I made it to town without major issue. An intermittent rain made for unpleasant nights, but the weather had been continually warming, so I didn’t freeze. On the way, I gathered a couple ingredients for Cassie and even gained another Skill level:

Forestry has advanced to Level 2!

As I neared the village, I looped around and approached from the west so that anyone with malicious intent would have a harder time tracking where I came from. I planned on leaving the same way as well as checking for followers, of course. It was a bit paranoid, but an extra hour of walking was a small price for the additional security.

My first stop was Griff’s house, where I found sitting outside knapping some arrowheads.

“Sean!” he greeted me as I approached. “Was beginnin’ to wonder if you’d gotten yourself lost. What can I do for ya?”

“Well, not lost, but I have decided to settle away from the village, over by the mountains,” I gestured vaguely. “There’s better hunting without any competition. Anyway, just thought I’d let you know so you can give the hovel to the next unfortunate soul that shows up.”

“Best o’ luck to you out there. Remember, it’s never too early to start preparing for winter. You’ll want a good stock of food and firewood. Make sure you have a chimney and proper insulation on your house, and that the roof’s sturdy enough for a couple feet of snow. Even if you clean it off regularly; we can get blizzards with a foot of snow overnight, easy.”

“Thanks, will do.”

Next, I headed over to the general store.

“Hello Rupert,” I said as I walked in.

“Hello, Sean was it? What are you looking for on this fine day?”

“Some rope, preferably strong enough to hold my weight. I’d really like a saw and some sort of lamp, but I’m afraid I don’t have much to trade.”

“Well, rope’s easy enough, long as you don’t want too long a piece. No saws at the moment though, and the only lamp I have is magical, so that’d cost you. What are you offering?”

“I have about a pound of aazal leaves that are good for seasoning, if that’s something you’re interested in. Otherwise just hides and potion ingredients.” I took out a couple leaves and offered them to him.

“Seasoning you say?” He took a leaf, broke it, then sniffed at it. “You try cooking with them?”

“Yeah, it was decent. Not my personal favorite, but definitely better than nothing.”

He nodded as he tried chewing on a bit of the leaf. “I’m not sure how high demand will be for them, but I’m willing to part with a rope for the lot.”

I, too, had no idea what they were worth. He might have even been intentionally fleecing me. It was a lot easier for me to pick some leaves than make a rope, though, so I took the deal and walked out with twenty-five feet of braided cord.

My final stop was the apothecary, where I traded Cassie the ingredients I’d found on the trip for some more basic medical supplies. After that, I headed back west out of town, only spotting a couple other people.

A few days traveling saw me back in the valley. On the way, I reviewed my Status, and was pleased to note that I’d actually managed to gain a point of Strength.

Status Obfuscated Status Name Keagan Murray Sean Holman Level 7 4 Progress 45/358 25/207 Statistics Health 72/72 39/39 Health Regen (/hr) 3.0 1.6 Mana 102/124 60/60 Mana Regen (/hr) 6.8 3.4 Strength 11 11 Endurance 10 10 Dexterity 12 12 Intelligence 17 12 Perception 11 11 Charisma 10 10 Abilities Identify III Identify III Obfuscate III Observe I Observe I Skills Spear 3 3 Forestry 2 2 Trapping 2 2 Wilderness Survival 2 2 Animal Processing 1 1 Foraging 2 2 Dodging 1 1 Leatherworking 6 6 Spells Mana Bolt 6 6 Teleport 12 Create Portal 6 Warp Space 7 Create Pocket Dimension 2 Attunements Space 17 Time 10 Earth 8 8 Fire 7 7 Resistances

Once back, I wanted to take Griff’s warning to heart, but I wasn’t sure where to start. I want to build a nice, permanent house, but out of what? I don’t have any good ways to cut down or process trees. Should I dig down, then maybe line the walls with something? Or try building sod walls? If I were to dig down, why wouldn’t I just dig out one of the ruins to live in? They were built out of stone, so they might be reasonably intact.

I’ll still have to find a way to fell trees for firewood though. Might even be a good idea to start with that, so the logs have time to dry out. Or should I work on making better traps and build a smokehouse?

In the end, I actually decided the first thing I would build was an outhouse. It was what I wanted the most immediately and I could use the smaller-scale project to test out construction techniques before beginning work on my house. As a bonus, it would also produce lots of scrap wood that I could burn.

Of course, the outhouse still required a way to chop down trees. Finding a safe and reliable one actually took far longer than I was expecting—the better part of a week, though I was still hunting and practising Teleport in the meantime.

All I needed to cut down was small trees, since I had no way of cutting large trunks into planks. Easy, right? Well, not for me, as it turned out.

At first I tried using my flint axe, as that was all I had on hand. The lousy job I did on its construction really held me back: the short handle, slight play between the axehead and the haft, skewed angle of the blade, and dull edge combined to make it so I could barely break the bark, and never in the same place twice. I did have better luck when I started infusing Health to use my brute strength, but it took over a quarter of my Health to fell a tree not even three inches in diameter. With how slow my Health regenerated, I wouldn’t get any work done at all if that was the best I could do.

Rather than immediately working on a better axe, I opted to make a serrated flint blade to use as a saw. This meant locating a source of flint and then heat treating it, which took time. I wound up making a couple flint axe heads while I was at it, figuring they would come in useful at some point.

The flint saw wound up being even worse than the axe at cutting trees. The teeth would barely bite into the wood and, furthermore, sawing back and forth with the tiny blade was hard work, so I built up a sweat. The sweat made my hands slip up to the blade, so I would cut myself as often as the tree. Infusing Health was just a waste.

My time making the saw wasn’t completely wasted though. I had noticed that when trying to chop smaller saplings with the axe, the axe would often bounce off the tree, even when I swung harder. With the saw, though, I could bend the sapling over and use the extra tension to saw through them with relative ease.

Anyway, after that I hafted my two new axe heads and tried them out. They were a definite improvement over my first axe, but ultimately faced the same problem: if I wanted fast progress, I had to spend an unsustainable amount of health. They were all I had though, so I figured I would have to be satisfied with chopping down only a couple of trees a day, then finding some other way to occupy my time. I had lots of other work to do, after all.

It was a slight mishap that actually gave me the inspiration I needed. I was terrified of a tree falling on me, so I tried my best to guide where they fell with notches and my rope, as well as only targeting small trees. As a total novice, though, I wasn’t great at it, so I was caught completely off guard when the trunk of a tree I was felling snapped, sending the butt end right at me. I moved away as fast as I could, but it still caught me in the arm, ripping my shirt, taking 15 points off my Health, and scraping my skin.

Shit. That was close; that could have messed me up. I need to rethink this whole chopping business, maybe even switch to building out of saplings and stick with burning deadfall. If only there were a way to cut them down from a distance. Wait; why haven’t I tried magic yet? Mana Bolt might not be destructive enough as is, but surely I can modify it somehow.

Thus began another bout of magical experimentation. As I suspected, even a large bolt of Mana only tore up the bark of a tree. While I could do more damage compacting the bolt down, that made it difficult to hit the tree unless I was right next to it, which defeated the whole purpose of using magic.

My next attempt was using Space-aspected Mana for the bolt, which immediately yielded a level:

Mana Bolt has advanced to Level 7!

That’s a good sign, at least. I really should have tried using aspected Mana sooner though, I thought as I walked toward my target tree. There was a new gouge about half an inch deep on the trunk. Definitely better, but still not good enough. Huh, there isn’t much splintering or debris; what happened to the wood I removed? Was it disintegrated, or did it teleport somewhere else?

No, that doesn’t matter right now; need to focus. Maybe Fire will be more destructive, especially to wood. I walked back away from the tree, then concentrated on my memories of staring into my campfires while manifesting my Mana. I struggled for a bit because I didn’t have any Fire-based spells to draw from, but eventually managed to cast the spell and even hit a tree. Not the one I was aiming for, but that could come later. And, hey, if I was able to fell a tree with a single spell from a safe distance, did it really matter if it was the right tree?

It didn’t fell the tree though. In fact, it didn’t do any more damage than the Space-aspected bolt, though gouge was charred and smoldering instead of an oddly clean cut. Does the element not matter? Wait, my Space Attunement is over twice my Fire one, that probably affects things. Which one should I practice? Fire seems better for breaking wood specifically, but I’d rather raise my Space Attunement. Maybe I can use both at once?

Of course I had to try that next. It proved quite difficult, but after a singed hand and half a dozen failures, I finally hit a tree. This time there was a small crater in the trunk. For the same Mana investment (per successful cast that is; I assumed practice would eliminate the failed castings), I managed to remove about twice as much of the tree. Unfortunately, this didn’t translate to penetrating twice as deep into the tree, since the crater was roughly spherical.

A lot of smaller projectiles would probably be more efficient than one large one since I only need a thin cut through the tree. If I could aim that is. Maybe I can change the shape? Something a bit more blade-like?

Unfortunately, more testing would have to wait because I had burned through most of my Mana with the failed casts and it was too late in the day for it to recharge much. Instead, I ate some dinner, repaired my shirt as best I could, then went to sleep.

In the morning, I woke up, stretched a little bit, then crawled out of my lean-to. I was greeted by a pair of golden eyes the size of my head, with vertical pupils affixed on me. Attached to the eyes was an even bigger head with a narrow jaw and iridescent cobalt blue scales, while stretching back from the head there was a sinuous spined neck, followed by a truly massive body. And folded up beside the body were a couple of wings.

It was a dragon. There was a giant fucking dragon sitting outside my lean-to, staring at me. And it had somehow snuck up while I was asleep, even though it filled the clearing while sitting with its wings furled.

I stood there, frozen. Am I hallucinating? I don’t think I ate any strange plants recently.

“Hello, human,” it said. Rumbled, more like, seeing as everything around it shook as it spoke. For that matter, it wasn’t even moving its jaw as it spoke, though in retrospect that was probably for my benefit. My bowels probably wouldn’t have held had it taken the opportunity to show off its teeth, to say nothing of its fiery breath.

“Uhh… Hello dragon?” Honestly, how does one greet a predator with a jaw as long as one’s body? I still haven’t figured that out, though I suspect there should be more groveling involved.

“You seem to have settled within my territory.”

“Sorry about that—I’ll leave right away. Be out of your… horns… in no time.”

“That will not be necessary. You’re so small compared to my territory that I hardly even noticed you. Really, your whole village could settle here and it wouldn’t make a difference to me. If that Empire of yours tried invading, then we’d have a problem, but otherwise we’re all good. It’s just that there’s something I need from you. I mean, I keep this area nice and free of things that would prey on you, so it’s only right that you give me something in return. Like a tax. Yes, just like a tax, even if I don’t really have to do anything because everything just runs away from me…” the dragon trailed off.

“Alright, I’m listening, what is it you want?”

“Oh, good. Well, you see, there are these mushrooms that grow in the caves higher up in the mountains, and they taste really good. Nornall mushrooms, they’re called, small and kind of a shimmery silver.” A shiver ran down the dragon’s spine. “Trouble is I don’t really fit inside the caves, so I was hoping you could get some for me. Every year, if you plan on staying for a bit.”

“That sounds doable.”

“About twenty pounds a year should do. Wouldn’t want to eat so many they become impossible to find. I mean, what sort of a foolish creature would do that? Certainly not me, nuh-uh. And I guess there’s no rush. It’s been centuries since I had any, I can totally wait a bit longer. You know, the legendary patience of dragons and all that. Besides, my razing days are long behind me.” The dragon made a strange rumbling noise.

I stood there. How am I supposed to respond to that?

“That was a joke. Humor does put your species at ease, doesn’t it? I have been told I’m a bit intimidating. It doesn’t seem to have worked. Oh dear, don’t tell me you actually believe all that propaganda from the dwarves? We dragons don’t really go around pillaging and burning aimlessly.” The dragon paused for a second, looking at its claws. “That barn was a total accident.”

I kept standing there, blinking at the dragon with my jaw hanging open, no clue how to respond.

The dragon shuffled its wings and lowered its head. “Dragons get hay fever too, you know? Really, could have happened to anyone. It’s not like there was anyone inside. There was no need for those people to start throwing their pitchforks at me. Waste of perfectly good pitchforks if you ask me,” the dragon mumbled.

I remained silent and baffled. This has to be a dream, right? But it doesn’t feel like one.

“Right, I’ll just be going then. I’d really like those mushrooms though. Uhh, bye.” The dragon started standing up.

“Wait!” Was I really trying to spend more time with a multi-ton carnivore? The morning was turning out far too surreal for my tastes. “Would you mind answering a couple questions.”

The dragon settled back down, but kept its head raised. “Questions? Sure, what do you want to know? I mean, yes, this is my natural scale color, though I find careful washing keeps them lustrous.”

“Err, alright. For the record, it’s not my empire, and if any of them do come invading, I’m not in any way affiliated with them—so please don’t roast me alive? And I was actually wondering if you knew anything about this valley and the ruins here.”

The dragon pulled back and started shaking its head. “No, no, no. I didn’t have anything to do with that. They were like that when I got here.”

I sighed internally. Were all dragons like this? “I didn’t think you did; I just hoped you might know something about the people who lived here, like their species or what happened to them.”

“Oh, well, like I said there was only a bunch of ruins when I got here. There are more ruined cities like them all over the continent, too, though mostly on the other side of these mountains. I ‘spose they’re all buried now. Dunno anything else.”

“So you wouldn’t have any idea how they carved this valley out?”

“Carved the valley?” The dragon looked around, craning its neck over the trees. “Huh, I see what you mean; never noticed that before. No, I don’t think that was the people that lived here. They had some big cities, but no massive terraforming. Weird.”

“What about other civilizations; are there any nearby?”

“Nope, this is about the furthest you can get from civilization on the planet. ‘Cept the middle of the oceans I suppose, but why would I want to live there? In fact, the only settlements on the continent are far to the south, past that big desert. It’s the storms, you know, that keep people away. Nasty things, even other dragons struggle to fly through them. Then again, they aren’t as awesome as me, but really, who can be?” The dragon preened.

“Of course. Umm, so about those mushrooms, where, exactly, can I find them? And how am I supposed to get them for you?”

“Oooh, the mushrooms. Yes, there are caves all over the mountains. That mountain behind you has one right above the treeline, real easy to spot. Great big opening, but then it gets all narrow. And don’t worry about bringing them to me, I’ll come by for them.”

“Well, it was nice meeting you, thank you for answering my questions, and I’ll be sure to get those mushrooms for you.” A small price to pay to appease a giant, toothy being, no matter how friendly.

“No problem.” The dragon paused for a bit. “Umm, right. I’ll be going now. Goodbye!”

The dragon stood up, then levitated out of the trees before unfurling its wings, without even waiting for me to respond. I would have thought the whole thing a poorly-thought-out illusion if not for the rush of air in its wake. I watched as it flew off, and it faded from sight instead of shrinking into the distance—some sort of camouflage magic I assumed.

Why is my life so strange? I didn’t even remember to introduce myself or get its name. And I can’t just keep thinking of it as it. Was it male or female? How would even I tell? Definitely can’t ask the dragon; it’d probably be offended. Or maybe just start pouting. Wait, are dragons even sexually dimorphic? That visit completely frazzled my brain; nothing makes sense anymore. Maybe I’ll wake up soon?