When the three of them got back to Rose’s house, they found Leah and the girls sorting through various cans, jars and bags of food that they had found in the neighbour’s houses. Leah explained they had gone through the gardens and made their way to almost all of the houses on their side of the street, stripping all the food that was still edible from all of them and bringing it back to the house. Other things that they had found included a couple of baseball bats and a couple of very nice knifes, someone on the street must have liked their blades as Leah had bought back a variety of lock knifes and two well maintained machetes that looked like they had seen plenty of use, in the garden that is. Seeing that their food situation wasn’t a problem for now, Rose felt slightly better for not being able to bring any food back from the store, after the troll attack non of them wanted to go back to the store to loot, even if the troll was dead.

Once Em and Alexia were done showing off the food and various little items they had found, Jon began explaining what had happened at the castle and that he was able to rebuild the keep but it might take a while, how long it would take he wasn’t sure about yet but it could be done. Rose then took over, showing what they had found in the camping shop and giving out the bags they had picked out for the other three. Then she explained what had happened at the store and why they hadn’t brought any food back with them.

Liam had been quietly sat on a chair until Rose started explaining what had happened with the troll, at the point Leah went over to him and wrapped her arms around him for the rest of the explanation. When the story was done and Leah sufficiently convinced that Liam was ok, they decided to break for lunch and Leah quickly whipped up some sandwiches from the bread they had left and any fillings she could find.

After lunch, Rose, Jon and Liam decided to head back to the castle to get some work done. Jon wanted to see how long his rebuild skill would take to fix the keep enough for them to move in, from what he remembered of the plans, the keep should have three or four floors depending on how the roof was built so there should be plenty of space for them to find paces to set up the camp beds and an area to put the stove. If his memory was correct there should even be some kind of water closet in the west wall somewhere, hopefully that could be rebuilt too.

Rose and Jon took a baseball bat and a machete each whilst Liam picked a couple of knives out over his mother’s protests. The way back to the castle was clear, it seemed the monsters had settled back down so they made good time and were back at the castle’s keep in record time.

As soon as they got there, Jon went straight to work and although it was slow, Rose could see the structure of the keep reforming before her eyes. After watching him for a few minutes, she decided to experiment with her new powers. Sitting down, she closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. She focused into herself looking for the connection she had used earlier, she could feel it but it kept slipping out of her grasp and fading away. Eventually she managed to grab hold of the connection and keep a good grip of it, now she had to work out what to do with it. Deciding to try the heatwave ability, she began concentrating on the feeling of the heatwave leaving her body, she pulled on the connection to the Essence before realising it was just building up with nowhere to go. Thinking back to the other times she has used the ability she remembered pushing out with her hand, so she raised them before her and pushed the ability out along them, noticing the essence travelling up her arms and out through her hands. The Essence seemed to be traveling through small threads through her arms before splitting into even smaller threads when it reached her hands and finally leaving through all her fingertips at the same time.

Invigorated by her success, she attempted to pool the Essence in the palm of her hand, imagining it flowing outwards and becoming a flame in the palm of her hand. Feeling a tiny amount of her Essence draining slowly, she opened her eyes to see the smallest of flames dancing in the pam of her hand. The shock of seeing the flame made her lose concentration and the flame flickered then died. Rose felt amazing as she saw the two prompts awaiting her,

New Skill learned; Essence manipulation - Allows greater control over essence pathways New Ability learned: Night light - Creates a small flame in the palm of your hand, useful for starting fires and not much else.

Rose was hopeful she could improve the aptly named Night light and the Essence manipulation skill would help her improve it faster as the skill leveled. Seeing Jon hard at work rebuilding the keep and Liam wandering around the inner bailey, Rose closed her eyes, sunk back into a meditative state and got back to work herself.

After Rose and Jon had started doing their own thing, Liam felt like a useless third wheel. He had nothing to contribute and nothing to train, all he had was two knives and it wasn’t like the adults were going to let him use them. They wouldn’t let him get close enough to a monster for the knives to even reach the monsters let alone harm them. Well, he guessed they wouldn’t if they ever saw anymore. For the amount of destruction and death on the first day, he had thought there would be more nasty things wandering about. However they had barely seen anything other than normal animals. Glancing up at Rose, he saw that whatever she was doing was working. There was a little flame hovering just above her hand. Feeling even more useless, he decided to check out the huge field on the other side of the inner bailey. Wandering out onto the field, the first thing he saw was a little rabbit munching on a leafy green plant.

Approaching the rabbit slowly, he thought about the pet rabbit he had as a young child. One morning he had gone out to feed it, only to find blood and tattered fur inside its run, he’d forgotten to lock the hutch door the night before and something had gotten in and taken his pet. He’d been upset for months after and his mum had refused to get him another outside pet. Thinking he could take the rabbit back as a pet for his little sister, he tried to pick it up.

As his hands came within reach of the rabbit, it whipped it’s head round and bit his hand. He yanked his hand away muttering curses that if his mother had heard she would have washed his mouth out with soap. Aiming a kick at the stupid rabbit, he watched in satisfaction as it sailed a few feet away before landing on the floor. As soon as it hit the floor it got back up and charged straight at him, then as it got close enough, the rabbit leapt into the air, aiming straight for Liam’s face. Panicking, he threw his hands in front of his face to try and protect himself. He was expecting the rabbit to impact his arms but he was shocked when instead he felt a strange pull, heard a squeak and then a thud. Opening his eyes and moving his hands, he saw the rabbit on the floor looking fried. He began hearing a slow rumble and looked around to see what was causing it. For a long moment he saw nothing, but slowly he could see small, grey lumps moving quickly towards him and before long he saw that it was a hoard of rabbits charging straight towards him. Taking one look at the mass of rabbits, he turned tail and ran back towards the others, hoping he was faster than the rabbits that were bearing down on him.

When Liam ran back into the inner bailey, Rose had just gained another level in Essence manipulation and a fire shot ability that let her condense her little night light into a much hotter, tiny ball of fire that she could fire several meters away and would do burning damage as well as piercing damage. Coming out of her notifications, Rose quickly realised that Liam wasn’t running just for the hell of it, there were rabbits literally biting at his ankles. Yelling for Jon to come help, she ran towards Liam.

Liam managed to put on a burst of speed and reach Rose a good ten to fifteen meters ahead of the rabbits, so she decided to try out her new skill. Aiming her palm at the rabbits, she formed her essence into the projectile and fired it, to her surprise the fire shot went straight down into the dirt instead of at the rabbits. Quickly realising her mistake she held her hand palm up and pointed towards the closest rabbit before firing again. There seemed to be no cooling down time so she could spam the ability as much as her Essence pool could handle, Which at ten Essence a shot would mean she could fire a total of fifteen before bottoming out, not counting for regeneration which she wasn’t sure on. This would mean that this would quickly turn into a hack and slash with the machetes, she just hoped that Liam would be ok. Surely some bunnies wouldn’t be too hard to kill?

As the rabbits got closer, Jon caught up with the other two and took in the situation for a moment before using his rock slab to push back and kill multiple rabbits at once. Rose saw Liam firing what looked like lightning and taking out several rabbits at once as the lightning would jump from one to the next, frying any it touched. Even with their new abilities, there were just too many rabbits charging at them. They started moving back towards the keep, which Jon had repaired up to the beginning of the second floor, continuing to use the last of their Essence to keep some room between them and the rabbits. Reaching their bags, Rose and Jon grabbed their machetes and charged back at the rabbits, keeping Liam behind them.

Eventually they killed the last rabbit and sunk to the floor exhausted. Looking around she realised that they had to clean the mess up, otherwise their new home would be full of decomposing rabbit corpses and parts of corpses. Rose could see that a few of the rabbits might be salvageable for meat, she didn’t think they would need the fur any time soon, no shortage of clothes to be found. Hopefully Leah would be able to make rabbit stew or pie, maybe even preserve some so they had meat for the months to come. Getting a knife off Liam, she began butchering the rabbit the way her grandmother taught her. Thanks to the various attacks used and the wild swinging of the machetes, there weren’t many rabbits left in good enough shape for her to work with but there was enough for a few meals.

Rose pulled up her character sheet and saw that she had leveled and gained new skills.

Name: Rose Conehey Level 3 Health Essence Exp: 20/400 115 155 Main attributes: Strength 8 Intelligence 15 Wisdom 11 Dexterity 10 Constitution 7 Luck 15 Skills

Identify- Shows target name and level up to ten levels above your own. Level 1 2.5% to next level

Skinning- level 1 50% to next level.

Essence manipulation - Allows greater control over Essence pathways Level 2

One-handed blade - Level 2 45% to next level

Abilities

Heatwave- uses 10 e per successful cast, does minor burning damage to target. Level 1 5% to next level.

-Heatblast- over powered Heat wave using all remaining E for twice as much power.

Night light – creates a small flame in the palm of your hand, useful for starting fires and not much else. Drains E at negligible rate.

Fire Shot- Condensed essence in the form of a flame projectile fires from above the palm, 5 meter range Level 1 0.5%

Affinities Fire - Novice Level 2 5% to lnext level Blessings Gaia's blessing Your dedication to your daughter has led to Gaia awakening your fire affinity.

Once Rose and Jon had looked at their character sheets, they turned to Liam for an explanation as to why a hoard of bloody bunny rabbits of all things had attacked them. Liam sheepishly explained that all he wanted was to take his little sister a pet to keep her company, he then told them about the rabbit attacking him and the rabbit dying from a shock that came from him.

Rose then asked him if he could see any blinking lights and sure enough, he now had a character sheet and an ability called zap, this was the attack she has seen him use against the hoard. Liam’s excitement over his character sheet wore off slowly so Rose took him aside to try and teach him the Essence manipulation skill, Jon was about to go back to work on the keep when Rose said he should try it as well to see if it would speed up the repair.

By this point it was only about half two in the afternoon so as soon as Jon had picked up the skill, he went straight back to rebuilding the keep. With help from the new skill and Rose passing him food and water every now and then as it seemed to help replenish Essence faster, the keep as up to the third floor in no time.

By around half five, the keep was rebuilt completely. The only things missing were any wooden or non-stone fixings that had been in the keep when it was first built. When it was finished, Rose and Liam joined Jon inside and saw that there was plenty of space for them to set up base here, they had the basic needs met in terms of fresh water from the well and a place to put the stove to cook on. They even had very basic toilets as long as someone emptied the pit every now and then. Rose thought to herself that it would be a perfect place to be their new home. With that, the trio decided to head back to Rose’s house and share the good news, tomorrow they would move into their new home.