When the tired trio arrived back at Rose’s house, Leah had dinner on the stove waiting for them. In between mouthfuls, Liam explained what had happened with the rabbits and boasted about his amazing new power over electricity to his mother and little sister, who gasped and nodded in all the right places. Eventually Jon was able to get a word in and told the three girls who had stayed in the house that they would be moving to a new home tomorrow, it would be a bit basic for a while and it needed a new door but they would be able to make do until they could fit new one as Jon could raise a barrier of stone to seal the entrance when they wanted to close the door. After dinner they all split off to do their own thing until bed.

The next day the group was up bright and early, ready to get on with the big move. Leah, Rose and Jon packed everyone’s backpacks with clothes, food and any other little items that they could find, aiming to take as much little stuff as possible in the first trip. Heading out, the travelled with Rose at the front and Jon at the back, Liam was in the middle with Leah and the girls as a last line of defence. The trip to the castle was uneventful, when they walked into the inner bailey and saw the keep, Leah and the girls gasped, Leah turned to Jon and asked “ How did you do all this in one day? The keep looks completely different.”

“I took breaks to let my Essence refill and the almost constant use for several hours leveled up my skill a fair bit, its at level 10 now but the progression as slowed right down.” Jon replied.

After that, they emptied the bags that they had brought with them, leaving Leah and Liam to watch the kids and start organising stuff, Rose and Jon headed back to Rose’s house to bring the stove and move food back to the keep. The two of them got half way back to Rose’s house before they began hearing growls coming from a near by building. They kept walking but then they realised the growling was coming from all around them. Scanning the buildings, Rose saw a mangy dog head appear from just inside a broken doorway, backing away slowly she kept looking around only to being making out the shape of these dogs all around them. She turned to Jon to let him know but saw he was watching a huge dog walking towards them.

Getting a better look at the dog, Rose saw that it was strangely mutated, the muscle and bone structure wasn’t quite right, A name tag popped up:

Alpha Mutated dog Level 5

Looking at the other dogs surrounding them, she saw they were between level one and three. Rose readied her machete and sent a one handed Heatwave at the alpha dog to push it back, giving Jon enough time to demonstrate a new ability, he raised his hands and a stone spike impaled the alpha dog through its stomach, it was left there slowly bleeding out as Rose and Jon worked together to kill the rest of the pack. By the time they had killed most of the pack they were both out of essence so had to switch to their machetes, Rose dashed at the nearest dog and opened a huge gash down one side of the dog, snarling the dog took advantage of the way she landed and sunk its teeth into her arm. Screaming in pain she desperately tried to pry its jaws loose from her arm, suddenly the dog whimpered and went limp.

Rose finally managed to release the dogs jaws from her arm and saw Jon standing in front of her wiping his blade clean on the dogs fur. Standing up, Rose checked her arm to see how much damage the dog had caused, to her surprise, the wound had already stopped bleeding. Turning back to Jon she said, “ It seems wounds heal quicker now, I’m not fully healed but I have stopped bleeding, we should get going and get that stove back to the keep as fast as possible. I will feel much better once we have moved everything we need into the keep.”

Jon agreed so they hurried the rest of the way to Rose’s house an quickly put the stove on the pump truck, seeing that the pump truck could hold more stuff, they decided to pack more of the food up into boxes and take that with them at the same time. Finally they piled the camping beds on top of everything and lashed them down with bungee cords. By the time they were ready to head back to the keep, Rose’s arm had completely healed. Marvelling at the new healing speed, they headed back to the keep, not encountering anything dangerous as they did so.

When they got back, they found the kids outside playing tag in the sunlight, Leah was sat on the flood watching them happily. Rose and Jon topped next to Leah and explained what had happened with the dogs before showing Leah the holes in Rose’s top where the dog had bitten her, followed by the fully healed arm that it had been on. Rose and Jon then carried the Stove into the basement, only to realise there was no where for the stove to be placed, there needed to be a hole for the pipe on the back of the stove where the smoke went out. Rose had no clue what to do but luckily Jon seemed to have an idea, wandering over to the wall where the stove was to go, he placed his hand on the stone and concentrated. Rose watched as a small tunnel appeared in the stone, before long she could see the light of outside through it.

Jon turned to Rose and explained’ “ I thought about what I did to rebuild this keep, and realised I was basically reshaping the stone and pulling more stone up through the ground to replace what was lost, so I decided to see if I could change the shape of stone without rebuilding an old building and obviously it worked, I’ve got a new skill called reshape stone, and it literally does what it says on the tin”

“That could be quite useful , do you think you could reshape the windows upstairs to be thinner? They are a bit of an opening in our defence at the moment, the door can be covered by one of your stone walls but the windows can’t.” Rose asked

Jon thought he probably could and said so, before pushing the stove into position and making sure the pipe fit snugly into the hole before shaping the stone to cover the pipe better, preventing any drafts from coming in. Heading back upstairs, they told Leah that the stove was in place and went to explore their new home. The first floor of the keep was accessed from the outside, when you walked in the first thing you saw was the central room which looked like it might once have been where everybody ate and gathered in the evenings, to the right was a set of spiral stairs leading both downstairs to the basement that they had just come through, and upstairs to the next floor. Around the main central room there were smaller rooms and walkways that would probably be used for storage. Heading back to the staircase after exploring the first floor, Rose noticed two little rooms off to either side, checking them out she saw a raised stone bench that had two holes in it, both sloping down and out of the keep wall. “At least we have basic toilets” thought Rose.

The second floor was pretty much the same layout as the first but with a small room that looked like a chapel. Rose turned to Jon and said “ I am a little confused, I’m sure a building like this would have had wooden support beams in the roof or for the walls, I’m guessing you can’t make wood as there isn’t any door, so how is this keep staying upright?”

Jon thought for a second before replying, “ I’m assuming anything that was needed structurally was reproduced in stone, I mean, this place seems fairly stable.”

Continuing to explore the keep, they headed up to the third floor. The third floor seemed to be set of private rooms, that maybe the lord of the keep used to sleep in with his wife. There was a water closet in one room, and a large stone basin in another that looked like it was used as a bath. Rose thought that there would be issues with who got to stay in these rooms and said as much to Jon.

Jon replied with, ‘There seems to be three different rooms that look like bedrooms, what looks to be a sitting room and a bathroom, all six of us could stay in these rooms at the same time as long as we don’t mind sharing. So I don’t see there being an issue in the short term, there might be problems when we get more people but we are the ones who started this, this is our home now.”

Rose decided that made sense and headed up to the next floor, this floor was mainly open plan and looked like it would be a good place to train inside, there was also a set of stairs leading up to the roof so they could keep a watch out there if needed. The two of them headed up to the roof and stood for a moment looking out on the beautiful view their new home offered. They stood for a while in silence, each privately promising to protect their new home and build a new life for their families.

After a while, they headed back downstairs and began setting out the camp beds and sleeping bags in the main room. Leah and the kids were downstairs making dinner and finishing putting away the food they had. Once dinner was done and they had all eaten their fill, they all went outside to enjoy the evening hours. Rose and Liam practiced their new powers as Emily and Alexia watched, wishing they could do such awesome things. Jon wandered over to the inner bailey wall and began using his rebuild skill to slowly fix the broken bits of the wall.

Leah, seeing that Alexia and Liam were occupied with Rose, decided to take a walk outside the inner bailey, she didn’t want to go too far because of the rabbits that Liam had found but she wanted to see the field. Walking out onto the grass, she saw a small red flower that she had never seen before, bending down to get a closer look, she was surprised when a prompt appeared telling her that she had received the Identify skill, looking back at the flower, she saw that it was called a Blooming Rosewart. When she tried to pick it, it turned black and crumbled to dust. Disappointed, she tried again only for the exact same thing to happen.

She decided to try one more time but this failed too. She was about to give up, when another prompt appeared telling her that she now had the Herbalism skill, she turned back to the Rosewart, this time her Identify skill showed her that she had to only pick the flower, not the stem. She collected a few petals before she got another prompt, this one told her that if she made the petal into a paste with a small amount of water it would regenerate health when eaten. Just as she finished reading the prompt, she heard Rose scream, running back into the inner bailey, she saw a huge black panther pinning Emily to the floor.