Before we begin the story, I'd like to say something and apologize.
This work began as, and still is, a creative writing project and was my first foray into releasing my work for others to read. When I began, I only really had a vague idea of what I wanted to do and how to get there. I wanted to write a Celestial Forge tale taking place in the setting of a Song of Ice and Fire focusing on a newcomer to the Free Folk and the world at large, and I wanted this to take place in the face of an oncoming apocalypse. It started well enough, then I took a year's hiatus away from writing and when I returned to it, the story changed drastically.
I threw
a lot of stuff in that wasn't necessary. I lost focus on the actual story I was trying to tell and got caught up with things that didn't even need to be part of the narrative. Basically, anything I thought was cool at the moment got tossed in with little thought to the ramifications, and worse, with increasingly irrational changes to the broader setting. There are personal reasons why this happened, but ultimately, it's my responsibility to fix and that's what I'm trying to do.
So, I'm re-writing this. There are some things that I want to keep and a whole lot more that's going to be cut out. Starting from the beginning again gives me a chance to better integrate the more fantastical elements and fix the story's pacing issues. I now have a firm foundation behind what the Celestial Forge is in this setting, how it works, and who Maia is. I know where I want this to go, and I have a better idea of how to get there.
There are a lot of changes in this version. Originally, I spent a lot of time telling and not a lot of time showing; I've gone back and given attention to the things I felt needed it. The monolithic chapters have been split and reworked for readability and pacing. While the first arc mostly takes place over a couple of days as Maia establishes herself, I'll be speeding things up after.
I appreciate feedback and criticism! Without all the readers who took the time to tell me that what I was doing
wasn't good, I might have kept going without realizing it. Without the supportive folks who engaged with the work and offered suggestions, I probably wouldn't have continued writing this. Thank you all who've commented and please continue!
With that out of the way, please enjoy.
Cold Winds Blowing
Lights swirled in darkness.
Motes of energy shone all around as they danced about each other. They gathered in groups, leaving voids between them; in the central gap they created, there was something else altogether.
A spray of minuscule glimmers radiating a cool cobalt glow lay in the darkness, slowly fading like dying embers. Each was a fragment of a memory, an experience, a feeling, a tiny shred of self. The glimmers yearned for each other, as much as they could be said to yearn, desiring to be whole once more, to be a thing that thinks and feels and knows the world; yet none could move, change, or grow. Time passed; then, there was something new.
One of the glimmers, a meager half-dead thing, collided with something soft at the very core of the void. It was drawn into the soft space and altered, a tiny tweak that fanned the ember and spread its light; in turn, the core, too, was changed. It gained desire and purpose from the glimmer. This new thing was still small and still frail, but it was stable and could persist.
A limb extended, tentatively poking out towards the closest glimmers, catching them and drawing them into itself and integrating them with the first. The desire to be whole intensified and it thrashed about itself, scooping up swathes and swathes of cobalt embers and growing all the while. There were holes in the pattern the glimmers formed within, empty patches and inconsistencies where things failed to match up properly, as though there had once been two distinct sources. The minor incompatibility was ignored as more and more was added to the core. Before long, a critical point had been reached and the amalgam began to collapse inward, condensing and solidifying.
By now, the core had developed a kind of weight to it and the glimmers had begun to swirl around it. A disc soon formed, the motion and proximity of the glimmers brightening the whole, preserved even as they fell towards the singularity. They spun and spun, draining faster and faster, colliding with each other and forming greater shards, coming closer and closer to a measure of wholeness. The core snatched them all up as it grew, the radiance within brightening. In moments, it had taken all the glimmers and was left alone in the empty gulf. All the self-stuff within jumbled together, constantly mixing as the fragments combined to form more complex structures that collapsed and formed again. For a long, long time, chaos was all there was.
A fortuitous cluster came together in a more stable configuration and became a seed for the rest to crystallize around. The whole changed between instants as the core's interior realigned; the chaos subsided and a spark of consciousness lit. A nascent mind began to dream of earlier times, when something like it had once lived in the sunlight and knew others like it, and loved and lost. It dreamed of itself, dreamed that it remembered the warmth of the world, and dreamed of the comfort of sleep. It wasn't itself sleeping yet, but it was fast approaching that state from the other side, moving away from the oblivion that spawned it. True consciousness arose with the weight of inevitability behind it, but it was a faltering, unstable thing, quick to fall before rising again.
Warm, heavy darkness.
It felt, and It felt that It was feeling.
Speckles of color dotted the emptiness, shifting and changing.
It saw, and It saw that It was seeing.
Dim awareness struggled to exist, weighed down by the remnants of a deep sleep.
The colors became clearer in the distance, stars of all shapes and sizes dancing around each other. They whirled about in great constellations, who themselves hurtled through the void, passing others and shifting the shape of the whole.
The endless dance continued for a long while. Occasionally, one constellation or another would come close and fly past. Sometimes, rarely, something would knock a light out of the constellation. The light would drift closer and closer to It, then burst in an overwhelming assault of sights and sounds and sensations that blot out everything else It was experiencing. Whenever It recovered, the light would be nearby, bobbing innocently along.
Simple animal awareness ruled It for a long while. Time moved in stuttering jumps and halts, zipping forward or lingering on an unremarkable moment. A curiosity of the world around it grew, and soon a distinction was made between the distant lights and the thing distinguishing. There It was, and there was everything else around It that wasn't part of It. The distinction resolved into the beginnings of self-awareness.
I am…
I didn't know.
Who am I? Where am I?
I didn't know that, either.
My thoughts were disjointed, lurching along. Whenever a light would come free from a passing swirl, it always fell towards me and flared away my cognition. When I could see and think again, it would be close by, swirling about me in a parody of the greater dance I was witness to in the distance.
Each time it happened, my mind was assaulted with information that I couldn't retain, the knowledge falling away from me regardless of my meager attempts to hold onto it. It hurt me terribly; each time my thoughts would be torn free at the root and blown away like dandelion seeds. I had to go back and fill in the gaps and rebuild trains of thought from the wreckage. It felt like it was getting easier to restore myself as the lights continued to come.
Slowly, laboriously, I began to remember more of who I was. My name… It was Maia, I thought. Was there another? I couldn't remember. There was nothing there when I reached out. Something about that saddened me deeply, the vibrancy of the emotion casting the others I now knew I was feeling in sharp contrast. I was exultant, terrified, and determined. A flicker of doubt; I'm alive, aren't I?
Do the dead dream of distant lights?
Snatches of memory flashed through my thoughts. There were vague figures of friends and family, the scattered recollections of an awkward life, struggling without realizing there was a struggle to be had. I searched for details, but the harder I looked the less there seemed to be. I had parents, I think, but I couldn't remember their faces. Sometimes, I would reach into the dark spaces between my memories and pull out a trace of another. A scent, a sound, a flash of color, all pieces of a puzzle that I only had to put together. I came to find my mother tied to the smell of poppy seeds, a chuckle, and a vision of a cherry flower held between red lacquered nails. My father smelled like copper and had a deep laugh, and his eyes burned gold.
Both terrified me; I didn't know why. Was that normal for families? Following that feeling led me to a dark room, though I could not see the walls, with only a small cot for furniture. The memory tried to pull me in and I pushed it away; I wanted to stay here with the lights, not to go back to the room. It was important to me that I never go back there.
I don't know how long I spent putting myself back together. The more memories I recovered from scraped-together details, the more holes I found. Sometimes the edges of the holes were clean, as though there was simply a puzzle piece missing; Other times, there would be a ragged tear where something had been lost forever. It became clearer and clearer to me that I had been deeply wounded, but I couldn't remember the injury, or the pain, only see the scars left behind.
The more whole I felt, the slower the lights moved. By the time I could remember most of what I thought there was to me, they had slowed to a nearly glacial pace.
What was happening? Was my sense of time reasserting itself, or was all this the hallucinations of a madwoman? Was I dying?
No answers were forthcoming.
There were quite a few lights languidly orbiting me, now. Fifteen, I tried to count, though the way they moved and my difficulty focusing made it hard to tell. Some had clustered together while others remained separate; if there was significance to that, it was beyond me. I wondered what they were, what they represented.
With my mind mostly whole, awareness of my body began to reassert itself.
Cold air chilled my lips and tongue as my lungs drew it in. Warm air tickled my nose as I exhaled. Something powdery and wet clumped between my fingers as I moved them ever-so-slowly. I was lying on my back, my legs outstretched and my hands at my sides. Something felt strange, vague sensations of pressure across my shoulder blades where there oughtn't to have been; it felt normal and it felt wrong all at once. My head pounded with the contradiction, and once I'd become aware of the pain, I found it impossible to ignore.
My eyelids were leaden and refused to open. There was light on the other side, bright and cool. Struggling, I managed to crack my eyes slightly.
For a disorienting moment, I thought I was seeing the stellar waltz with my real eyes, the perceptions conflicting and superimposing over each other. Blinking once, twice, and then a third time cleared it away, leaving the void of dancing lights distinct in my mind. It faded as my attention turned away from it, though it never vanished completely.
I was staring up at a clear night sky. The full moon hung above me, large and bright in my vision. There was a long gray scar across its face that drew my eyes. Tracing my sight along the dark line, the sensation of normal-not-normal returned, buzzing like pins and needles under my skin. My thoughts turned sluggish, torn between acceptance and rejection.
Hello, moon. I don't remember that blemish on your face, but I do at the same time. That's not right. I should remember one thing, not two. Why are you so important, moon? Are you here to help me?
Strength was returning to my arms and legs, enough that I could use my hands to clear the sleep from my eyes. My fingers felt different; holding them in front of my face, I saw they were more delicate and quite a bit slenderer than I thought I remembered them being. Things were the same, and things were different, and I wasn't sure I could take it for much longer. My head ached under the weight of it all.
I rolled over onto my side, snow compacting under me. The pressure on my back was alleviated, a freeing sensation that took momentary precedence over the expanse of white powder in front of my eyes.
It occurred to me, belatedly, that I wasn't wearing gloves. Fascinated, I pulled my hands through the snow in front of me, fingers spread wide. It was cold, but that was an oddly distant sensation. It was the feeling of chill without the bite that signaled danger or harm. With snow like this, my fingers should be frostbitten, and they weren't.
Why was that? Was something wrong with me?
My fingers struck something in the snow, something rigid and slender. I felt it out with both hands, finding it to be a smooth and slightly curving rod. Grasping it, I brought it closer.
The mysterious object was beautiful. It was made of lacquered wood and painted along its length was the delicately worked limb of a cherry tree, the pink blossoms almost shining in the moonlight. It was long, more than a meter by my reckoning. One end was rounded off, while a handle emerged from the other. I brought it closer; the handle was bare metal, though it looked textured like leather. A strong feeling of possessiveness welled up inside of me. This was mine. My blade. It was a confusing emotion; I couldn't remember where I'd acquired it.
I brought my hand down to the hilt and I found it felt warm under my palm. Wiping the remaining snow off it, I turned it in the moonlight as I examined it more closely. Emblazoned on one side of the hilt and lacquered scabbard alike was a pair of small wings worked in silver. On the opposite side, both bore a matching circle, half inlaid silver, half glossy black stone, separated by a sinuous line.
I didn't recognize the wings, but the circle seemed familiar. I couldn't place why or how; only that it did. I stared at it for a long moment, puzzling it over. The split circle made me think of balance.
I felt a parallel with that. The competing feelings of normality and abnormality pushed and pulled against each other inside me. The moon loomed large in my sight and I was reminded of the tides, a constant ebb and flow across the world. Gradually, as I traced the circle with my thumb, the conflict within began to settle and my headache subsided. The silver was cool and the stone felt oddly greasy, though it left no residue on my skin.
Setting the scabbarded sword down, I stretched my limbs to their fullest and took a deep breath. I rolled over onto my belly and then pushed myself to my feet. A wave of dizziness passed over me and I wobbled unsteadily for a moment, daring not to move further lest I pitch myself back into the snow. It passed after a moment and I steadied, looking around.
I was standing in a small clearing surrounded by dense evergreen woods. Snow was everywhere, coating the trees and ground alike, and my breath steamed in little clouds. There was darkness under those needled branches and among that underbrush that had the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. I was completely exposed out here. I found I was glad that a wild animal hadn't eaten me while I was convalescing. That didn't mean there wasn't anything out there, though, and the thought worried me. Carefully turning, I saw a village illuminated by the moon's silver glow.
It was little more than a cluster of snow-covered buildings nearby, a few crude wooden structures surrounding a pale tree with dark red leaves. Each leaf resembled a grasping hand, and the color of them made me think of blood. The tree was massive, the canopy stretching overtop the whole of the village while the roots twisted around the buildings. There was a clear path up to the tree, I could see. A face had been carved into the trunk, vague outlines of a chin and cheeks that gave the impression of a square-jawed man, eyes empty hollows and mouth agape. A thick fluid ran down from the eyes and dribbled from the corner of his mouth, the same shade as the leaves.
A light breeze picked up, sending the leaves waving and my hair streaming behind me. A bird sat on one of the branches and I had the most unsettling feeling that it was watching me. It looked to be a black-beaked raven, with feathers the color of charcoal in the shadow of the leaves. A little shaft of moonlight made it through the canopy and shone down on it; it chortled as it hopped along the branch away from the beam. All the while it stared at me, head cocked as though curious.
I shivered, rubbing my arms and feeling soft furs under my hands. Looking down at myself, I found I was wearing an outfit appropriate for the environment. I wore what I could only describe as a parka, furred around my neck and halfway down my arms while the rest appeared to be treated hide. Pocketed trousers of the same material protected my legs, and my feet were ensconced in flexible boots. There was a band tied around my waist as a belt and a few empty pouches that buttoned closed hanging from it.
Confused, I shook my head and looked back over the village. The buildings were dark and silent. I couldn't see anybody moving around from where I was standing, nor did I hear anything beyond the raven's chortling and the whisper of the wind. It felt lifeless and empty, as though all the warmth of living people had been stolen away, leaving a frozen carcass behind.
I wondered if I was going mad. None of this made any sense! Was this a coma dream? Were those real, or was that just an idea I'd picked up from fiction?
Uncertainty gnawed at my gut as I chewed at my lip. A sharp burst of pain came as I bit a little too hard and I winced. That felt real enough. Crouching down, I scooped some snow into my hand, lifting it to my eyes. It certainly appeared to be normal snow. Using my thumb, I pushed some of it around, then blew on the powder. It puffed into the air, acting just how powdery snow should.
I still didn't know why I wasn't wearing gloves. That might have made this whole situation feel more realistic; maybe it was just the cracks of my otherwise convincing false reality beginning to show.
I was feeling much better now, the fog in my head clearing up as I stood straight again and breathed the cold air. It smelled clean, lacking elements that I'd grown so used that I noticed their absence more than anything else. Bending and retrieving the scabbard, I managed to finagle it onto my belt. It hung awkwardly, extending behind me by a nearly ridiculous amount. Was this supposed to be worn on the back? Experimentally, I rested my hand on the pommel, unsure of how to stand with it. I shifted my feet some, altering my posture until I found my balance. Taking a few steps, I began to adjust to it as I walked in a small circle, leaving prints in the ankle-deep snow.
My awareness was drawn back to the light-speckled void in my head as a constellation swirled over me. It was titanic and terrifying, but I couldn't move to avoid it, nor could I close my eyes and ignore it. I just had to bear it. As though on reflex, something reached out from me and grabbed a light, pulling it back towards me.
It fell deceptively slowly. Knowing what was to come, I braced myself to try and hold onto what information I might get from it. The burst of knowledge brought my headache back in force, though the pain was worth it as I gaped at what the light represented: An ability, superhuman in scope.
This was only one of many, many lights of its size I could see out among the clusters. Its effects were enough to make me gasp. Somehow, this one little light would let me do ten people's worth of work at once when I worked on a project. Anything that could use extra hands would benefit, excluding anything like coding that required the use of a keyboard, as only one person can reasonably use a keyboard at a time.
Stumbling forward, I almost fell over into the snow. That made sixteen lights orbiting me now, so did that mean I had that many… Abilities? Powers?
Did I have some kind of superpower? That seemed the sort of thing that pointed at this being some sort of wild delusion.
Then again, even if I couldn't trust my perception of reality, this was the only reality I could perceive right now. I resolved to treat it as real until such time that it was revealed to not be, and that was that.
This strange, cold environment was real. The tiny village was real, that strange tree was real. The scarred moon and the raven were real, too.
My power, or powers maybe, was real.
Fear hollowed my belly and I grasped at the fur on my sleeves, rubbing it between my fingers. I felt it twist and curl, a raw tactile sensation that felt grounding. I closed my eyes and crouched, holding myself close. This was wrong. I wasn't supposed to be here, but I didn't know where I should be. All I thought I knew was being thrown into doubt.
I took a deep breath in through my nose, held it, then released it out my mouth.
Calming breaths, don't fall apart.
The sword at my waist had a weight to it that helped steady my thoughts. I gripped the hilt with both hands, feeling the odd texture and the warmth radiating from it. It was substantial, something genuinely real, and I clung to that sensation.
I wrangled my panic, wrestling with it, forcing it back down through force of will. It fought back, my mind conjuring up images of myself laying in a hospital bed, comatose and hooked up to beeping machines and bags of fluids. It was vague and indistinct, and it took several moments to realize the person lying in that bed didn't have a definite appearance. In one thought, my hair was blond and tied up in a bun, and in another, it was long and silky black, splayed around my head. My face… I shivered at the indistinct features. The warmth of the blade proved them all false, though I couldn't figure out how or why.
Who was I?
If I couldn't keep things straight in my head, I certainly couldn't keep an imagined reality steady. Cracking open my eyes, I saw the village in the clearing, the scarred moon overhead, and bloody hands reaching from a spray of branches. The tree's carved face remained the same as it had been.
I breathed out a sigh of relief. This had to be real. I could deal with that.
It felt like a fragile victory. I knew I wasn't anywhere close to being alright with the situation, but it would work for now. It would have to. I didn't have any other choice.
Next step, evaluate the situation. This area looked a little like the colder parts of Canada, maybe. Miscellaneous documentaries and a few Survivorman episodes had been the only exposure to this environment I could think of.
Hah, I could remember specific episodes of a show I'd last watched years ago, but not my family name.
No, focus. There was more there, much more, I just had to dredge it up. I remembered playing in snow much like this as a little girl, rolling it in my hands and tossing it at someone bigger. I remembered sitting under wide windows, watching snow fall on an evergreen forest as my fingers traced along the pages of a book. I remembered snatches of my childhood, but half the context was missing. There was a sign, with the words University of Winnipeg writ large in my mind. There was meaning there, something important, but it was gone as soon as I felt it.
Why was I so sad? Why did this feel like I was tearing myself apart?
Scrubbing away fresh tears, I made myself stand straight. Maybe I would remember more later, maybe I wouldn't. For a moment, I wondered if I was Canadian; the concept resonated with me, a little, and I ran with it. My name was Maia, and I was Canadian, and I had a sword, and I had what I could only describe as superpowers. That made four things I knew about myself. It would do for now.
It's night and the snow looks fresh fallen. I should be dead or hypothermic. Maybe I was dying and this was a last-moment delusion that my brain was projecting- No, stop, down that path lies madness. Don't question reality, damn you!
I could feel that it was cold, though it wasn't harming me. Another ability from those lights in my head? I supposed it must have been, however it worked. Whatever the reason, I was grateful to be alive. The air remained fresh and pure with each breath, though it had begun to taste a little odd when I inhaled through my mouth. There was a peculiar scent in the air, a queer sort of cold separate from the chill that should have been biting. I knew for sure that I'd never smelled that before in my life.
I should check the village. Maybe my lights were keeping me alive for the moment, but it might only be a reprieve and shelter was right there.
Trudging through the snow, I cautiously approached the dark huts. I kept my ears sharp, listening for any noises. I still heard nothing beyond the raven's quiet call and the wind. Long icicles hung from their roofs and frost coated the wood and daub walls. Peering into the huts as I made my way toward the largest building embedded in the tree's roots, I saw only what the moonlight illuminated. Rough-hewn furniture, hearths with half-burned firewood, and dark splotches that might have been blood. I saw no bodies, nor any living people. It was as though everyone who had lived here had picked up and left, leaving everything behind; why they quenched their fires in this environment, though, was a mystery. Seemed to me that keeping warm should be important.
Picking my way between the buildings, I kept an eye on the raven in the tree as I moved towards the large building; it stared back with its head cocked, then it made an odd noise, almost like speech. I blinked at it, stopping and cocking my head in imitation. It crowed again, and this time my brain put together the sound properly.
"Run," it rasped at me, then began to repeat itself. "Run, run, run."
I shook my head, dismissing the half-words. Birds don't talk; at least, they don't say anything meaningful. I wasn't sure how I knew that. Maybe I'd read it in a book somewhere. I turned my focus back towards my goal.
The building wasn't much more than a large shed, the interior shadowed and inscrutable. This close to the tree's trunk, the moon no longer shone through the canopy and the gloom was impenetrable to my eyes. The odd scent was much stronger here. I still couldn't place it.
My boot kicked something on the frozen ground that rattled as I stepped back. I froze, not daring to make another move.
Nothing.
The raven chortled and I jumped, startled.
"Shut up," I whispered harshly at it, momentarily surprised at the pitch and tenor of my voice; I thought I remembered it being huskier, but now I found it to be soft and light.
The bird bobbed its head in a mocking nod.
I decided that I didn't like ravens. That made five things I knew about myself.
After waiting for what felt like forever, I began to relax. If anyone was around and heard that, they gave no sign. This village seemed long abandoned and I couldn't place why I felt so paranoid about it.
Crouching down, I felt around the darkness for whatever I'd kicked. My outstretched fingers found something with smooth segments braided with a cord, and I took it. Standing, I examined the object. It was a necklace, or maybe an arm band, made of the finely carved bones of small animals interwoven with something that might have been sinew. Frowning, I turned it over in my hand. It seemed the sort of thing that took time and effort to make and I had no guesses as to why it was just lying out like that. Surely, it was worth something to someone, so why leave it?
A scraping noise from within the gloomy structure sent a chill down my spine. Spinning to face the threshold, I found myself staring into bright blue eyes, like two shining blue stars, set in a face drawn in a terrified rictus. Backing away, I put my hands up, opening my mouth to try and calm… Her? As she stumbled out into the light, I saw that she was a young woman. She walked with an unsteady gait, one leg too stiff to bend, hands raised as if to grab me.
She had a great slash drawn across her belly, her intestines hanging loosely from the wound, studded with rivulets of frozen blood. She wore furs like mine, though hers were covered in hoarfrost and her parka had been soaked through with blood and other fluids.
Gagging, I fell back, landing on my rear and dropping the bone necklace. She was dead, yet still came forward, one step after another, and it was all I could do to scramble away on all fours. This wasn't a person, not anymore. Something about those eyes, the awful blue light in their depths, told me that. They felt cold just to look at, colder than anything else I'd ever known. She was walking more steadily now, speeding up as she moved.
I leaped to my feet, hand going for the hilt at my waist as I continued backing away. The warmth of it warred against the chill from her gaze. I'd never drawn a sword before and it took me several tries to get it out of the scabbard. By the time I'd drawn it fully, revealing the oddly dark length of it, I was back in the moonlight, a fair distance away from the village. This was the only weapon I had on hand, and I had no idea if I could outrun this… Thing if it kept accelerating.
Awkwardly, I held the blade in a two-handed grip, the wavering point held towards the creature. It ignored the implied threat, continuing its dogged pursuit. The warmth under my hands felt like a shield between me and it. My feet found their footing in the snow all on their own. A surge of confidence anchored me and I began to breathe evenly, some sense telling me to wait until it was within reach. I stepped forward, raising the sword with steady arms, and brought it down in one motion. The blade seemed to hum as it carved through the air, passing through the creature's arms and torso with far less resistance than I had expected.
As soon as the blade reached the heart, the blue in its eyes snuffed out like candle flames. The corpse hung suspended from the metal for a moment before falling to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
All at once, the strength and certainty drained out of me. Panting with sudden exertion, I stepped back a little bit, the sword wavering, and held as ready as I could manage. Would it get back up? Were there more of them?
Sparing a glance back toward the village, I didn't see any others. My attention returned to the body on the ground, shortly to be diverted by another constellation moving.
I caught another small light, bringing it back to me. It settled and I was again surprised by what it gave me. There was a wealth of knowledge about carpentry and construction, as well as the ability to analyze and utilize wood and other plant-based materials for all manner of things. It also allowed me to form mental blueprints for projects using those materials. It wasn't just the vague idea of an outcome, but a mental document complete with dimensions and step-by-step mental checklists of all necessary tasks for making it a reality. Almost as an afterthought, this light boosted my ability to locate resources I needed and made projects using them take half as long to complete.
I could make myself snowshoes now if I wanted. A laugh fell from my lips, an unfamiliar chuckle. I didn't remember laughing much. It sounded strange to my ears.
The corpse hadn't moved while I was mentally adjusting. I relaxed slightly, lowering my weapon. Taking advantage of the respite, I examined the sword. It wasn't shiny and silver as I'd thought swords should be. Rather, the metal had a deep reddish-black hue to it, and it had only one sharpened edge along the outer curve, rather than being double-edged. It must have been very sharp indeed to cut through the monster's body as easily as it had. Testing the edge with my thumb, I winced at the feeling of it slicing through my skin. I was astonished as a little ripple of light shone, starting where it had cut me and running across the metal. As the ripple touched the edge, a thin vapor wisped from it.
Pretty.
I wasn't sure what to do with the discovery. Unusual as it certainly was, I could figure out why that had happened later.
Carefully sliding the blade back into the scabbard, I re-examined the buildings with my new ability, an exercise to prove to myself that I could do it as much as anything else. The village wasn't nearly as ramshackle as I had thought. Those buildings may not be very pretty, but they were well-built and would provide good shelter from the weather. There was a surprising knowledge of architecture on display, turned fully towards practical utilitarianism rather than aesthetics.
Still, I wanted to be away from this place. There might be more walking dead lurking about, and I had no illusions that I had been anything but lucky with the one. If I ran into a faster one or was surprised, I'd probably be screwed.
The woods seemed slightly less ominous, though that seemed more to do with the new way I was evaluating them for their value as resources than anything else. They were just as dark as they'd been when I'd awoken. Looking around for signs of a trail or other path, I couldn't see anything at first glance, nor after a closer look. I eventually chose to put my back to the village and started walking.
My first order of business was to travel a fair distance from here. I wasn't sure how far that would be, so I'd probably stop whenever I found an opportunity. I could build a small shelter easily from what I was seeing around me. Making a fire wasn't going to be a problem now, as that quite readily counted as utilization of wood and/or plant-based resources. As I walked, I ruminated on the oddness of my new ability. Sure, I could build practically anything I needed from wood, up to and including incredibly complex carpentry, yet knapping flint remained beyond my ability. I supposed I could try anyway, but I didn't even know what flint looked like, and I'd probably just end up ruining any I managed to find. Meanwhile, my eyes found a northern white cedar and I found I knew every possible use for the tree. So, so strange.
A little further on, I stumbled on another of those red-leaved trees growing in a small, dark clearing. It was much, much smaller than the one back in the village, and the white bark was unmarred. I was inexplicably glad for that; something about the first made me uneasy. I didn't think I'd like to run into a pale face in the darkness. The thought alone had me reaching for the sword's hilt. Unlike every other plant I've encountered, I had no idea what it was useful for. It might as well have been a rock for all the information I was getting from it.
The tree's roots ran across the ground of the clearing in a tangle of wrist-thick appendages. The canopy of scarlet leaves above kept most of the snow off the ground and the trees around were too thick for much to blow in from the sides. It felt almost like an enclosed room, though one with treacherous flooring, a leaky roof, and a terrible draft.
Picking my way carefully over the roots, I thought about resting here for the night for a moment. The branches above me shifted about and I looked up. A pair of crimson eyes glared down at me in the darkness.
Terror jolted down my spine and I fled back into the safety of the woods.
I ran until I couldn't anymore, slowing to a walk. I felt ridiculous, replaying the incident in my mind. It had probably just been an owl or how the moonlight shone through the leaves.
Convincing myself took a little walking more, though. I decided to put it out of my mind for now; I was a decent distance away from whatever it was and had more important things to consider.
I wondered if I should name the lights. So far, I hadn't lost the information that they'd given me since I'd woken up, so I hoped that would continue in the future. With that in mind, if I knew what something did, I'd probably need some sort of shorthand just to keep from becoming confused. I'd call this newest one Woodworking, for lack of anything better. The other I had received, the multiplier to my work on projects, I'd have to think about. Ten in one, maybe? That would synergize wonderfully with Woodworking, now that I considered it. Working ten times as fast on a project that would now take half the time it otherwise would? That was wondrous. Something that would have taken me an hour before could be done in only three minutes if I had my math right.
After a long while of walking through the snow and pushing through shrubs, I came across another small clearing among the pines. The earth had a thicker layer of snow, coming up to my shins, and the sky was visible overhead. The moon, now past its zenith and descending, just barely peeked through over the tops of the trees. The floor of the clearing was half-lit by silver, half covered in shadow. The snow on the ground reflected enough that it was bright enough for me to work under if I was quick about it.
This seemed as good a spot as any to rest for the night. I considered what I might need, and Woodworking filled in the gaps. In a few moments, I had a detailed plan for shelter, and in another, a plan to build a fire. The ability seemed to take into account the speed given by other lights, as the five minutes I'd need for a pine-bough lean-to seemed shorter than it would otherwise be. A fire would take ten, partially because I needed to fabricate a few simple tools. Fortunately, all of the materials were already present in the environment around me, I just had to gather them.
As I set out, I was disoriented by the speed I was working. It wasn't as though there were ten of me all at once, it was more that I was working ten times as fast. The mental checklists were incredible for keeping me on task, and I was certain I'd have taken much longer than the fifteen minutes my shelter required without that aspect.
The lean-to was set up in a small hollow brushed clear of snow, with the firepit placed close enough to warm without becoming a hazard. I matted layers of balsam fir boughs on the ground to provide insulation, and a few minutes of foraging supplied me with edibles to roast, a few pungent toothwort roots, some sprigs of wood nettle, and a small assortment of mushrooms. The toothwort reminded me strongly of horseradish in scent and flavor, but it was palatable enough when had few other options.
Lighting the fire took a little longer, once I'd gathered enough dry wood to feed it. Birch trees were growing nearby; the bark made for good tinder, and it was easy enough to pull sheets of it off the trees. I pulled the bark apart into fibers, setting them aside as I scraped a groove in the side of a sizable fallen branch. I piled some of the fibers into the groove, took up a straight stick, placed one end among the fibers, and spun it between my hands. With the speed boosts from my powers, it took less than a minute before a tiny thread of smoke rose. I carefully transferred the embers to the fireplace, fed it oxygen by gently blowing over it, and before too long I had a crackling fire to warm my hands.
I took some time to arrange the food I'd foraged to roast, then crawled into my lean-to and watched the fire as it kept the darkness at bay. It was mesmerizing, the little flames dancing around the broken branches I'd fed it. My imagination wandered, wondering what the future held for me. For a moment, I let myself drift, pretending the flames were acting out little scenes as they constantly changed. I knew I was only projecting what I wanted to see, but that was just another way I could get to know myself a little better.
One moment, I thought I saw the little flames bunching up on one side of the fire and a gust of wind blew snowflakes down onto the other. They seemed to war with each other for a moment, then one of the branches cracked loudly, startling me, and the fire spread through it all again. Another moment and one of the smaller sticks crumpled into a nearly serpentine shape, charred white. A flicker of uncertainty ran through me, and it left the strangest sense that I'd seen something else like that and forgotten it. The fire flared up a little and I thought I saw a tall silhouette there. My imagination filled in the gaps and turned it into a broad-shouldered woman, facing away from me.
I wondered what all of that meant for me. Why would my brain see those things, and were they significant to me? I didn't feel any strong attachment to the imagined scenes.
It wasn't too long before drowsiness crept up on me. I still hadn't fully recovered from whatever had happened to me, and I was coming down hard from the adrenaline earlier. I struggled to keep my eyes open, watchful of the darkness.
