An Arcane Engineer in Another World: Book I Exile. Chapter 2

I’d expected to walk into hell. Or maybe heaven. Or maybe wake up and find out that this was a bad dream.

Instead, I walked into a fucking snowstorm. I couldn’t see a thing, and the snow was hitting me like a solid force.

And I hated the cold. Cloak, jacket, pants, all the clothing that had been so warm was now barely keeping me from freezing as I felt the cold just sink into my bones.

I looked back and even with the lousy vision I had…

Yeah. There was nothing behind me, but a pair of footprints, rapidly filling up.

If I don’t get out of this snow, I’m gonna die. I needed to find a place I could get out of the wind…

Oh sure, an archmage could have shouted out some word that made your ears bleed and banish the storm, but I was an arcane engineer.

Okay, stop bitching, time to find shelter. But I was in an empty space, nothing around me, and that meant…

I’m an idiot. I reached into one of my pockets and pulled out a compass. Looked at it as the dial whirled around and then…

Right. North wasn’t north here. But the needle was holding steady, and that meant I could use it to keep walking in a straight line. That way, I wouldn’t end up dying walking in a circle.

Okay, Marcus, here we go. One foot in front of the other, and why didn’t I ask for snow shoes?

I started, moving, one foot in front of the other, sinking into the snow. It was getting darker, but I didn’t have time to work a ritual for some light. I needed to get out of the wind and cold, find shelter, because if I stayed out here, I was gonna die.

“Oh I saw Rose once, coming through the door, before I saw her face, her chest made my heart soar…” It was a stupid vulgar song, but it was loud and I could focus on the song instead of the fact that I was freezing to death.

The clothes I was wearing would handle normal snow just fine. This was almost like what I figured the Top Of The Mountain would be like.

I kept walking, getting into the “Maiden and the Dragon,” making up verses as I went along. I was on “and the lich wanted child support” when I slammed into something. There was still a little light, and I could…

A fence? A wood fence?

Thank the gods, because fences meant people and people meant houses and if I followed the fence long enough…

Okay, it might just end, but this was better than just walking in a straight line hoping to hit something. I turned and started walking, one hand lightly resting on the wooden fence.

But as I kept on going, my feet got heavier, and my voice started to fade out.

I wasn’t going to make it.

Heh. I’d escaped the headsman to freeze to death.

Well, as deaths went, it wasn’t terrible. But I—

Wait a minute. There was something at the end…

Was that a house?

I put on one last burst of speed. If the house was full of cannibals,at least I’d die warm.

As it got closer, I saw that it was a house. Big, like a farmhouse back home, with two stories.

The door was open, and I saw that the windows had been smashed, probably by wind driven items—an open window creaked and banged on its hinge.

Okay, probably not cannibals, unless they’re ice ghouls.

I staggered up the steps, and right before I went in, I held out my hand.

Light… and a little sphere of light appeared. A cantrip—practically everyone with any talent learned those, given how useful they could be. With the heatless light floating above me like a lantern, I could see. I walked into the room. I had a hand on the sword, but yeah, if anyone was alive here, someone walking in with a drawn sword… not the best way to say ‘hi.’

But the lower story, which seemed to be pretty much one big room, was empty, heaps of snow on the floor, icicles dangling from the roof. There were chairs, a big couch, and a fireplace…

Empty and cold.

There were other things, strange things. I saw what looked like lamps, but they were neither mage lamps nor oil lamps. They were connected to the wall by some kind of cable…

Okay, don’t touch. I didn’t know what they were, but there were lots of ways foreign magic could bite you in the ass and so I squatted down and started making motions with my hands, conjuring the ritual of mage sight.

I wasn’t a wizard. I couldn’t do it with just a word and an exertion of will. But I wasn’t a bad arcane engineer or ritual crafter and after about a minute, I felt the ritual settle on me and looked around and…

The hell? There was no magic. None! Even in a house without any enchantments, you could still pick up old traces of magic, maybe an illusion ritual for a kid’s name day or the lady of the house had bought a bound cleaning spirit…

But this place was dead. The only way it would be was if someone went to a lot of trouble, but why? You didn’t need that to purge possibly dangerous magic…

A violent shiver overcame me. I was out of the wind, but not out of the cold. There was nothing in the fireplace and…

Okay, check upstairs first.

I didn’t find anything. There were closets, some with clothes, strange clothes, and open drawers and cabinets. In fact…

Someone had been here, and they’d left. Left in a hurry, not bothering to close anything. The second story was the living quarters, along with a kitchen and bath chambers. I didn’t bother to check the faucets—any water had long since frozen.

Something was odd. And then I saw it. The drawers had been opened, but not thrown to the ground. Under their blankets of snow, the beds… had been made up.

No. Wait. They might not have left in a hurry…but they did leave, never expecting to return. The wind hadn’t knocked the door open. It had been left open, I bet.

A quick check of the kitchen proved that. There were plates, nice plates, but no food. No jars, no preserved tins of meat…

And a big box that looked like an old-fashioned ice box, but had no place for the ice…and not a hint of any preservation magic. Empty as well.

And now that I was looking, I noticed other things. Places where there had been paintings on the wall. Empty no—

I sneezed.

Okay, it was time to get warm. And since the locals had abandoned the house, hopefully they wouldn’t take offense at some of their furniture getting used for wood. My hatchet made short work of a table, giving me plenty of wood. I rattled the flue of the fireplace enough to confirm that it hadn’t been blocked and then piled some wood in there.

Some more chopping and then using my knife to shave off some wood to make kindling, and it was time. I put my hand over the pile, spoke the words and moments later, a spark kindled in it. And then I had a nice, cheery fire.

Immediate survival issues fixed, as in I wasn’t going to freeze to death, I went and closed the door and drew the curtains over the windows, pushing the furniture up against them, so that the wind wouldn’t blow them out.

I didn’t want anyone to see the fire. In this kind of weather, people were desperate, stupid, or looking for easy prey.

And anyone who hadn’t been dropped her, IE, not me, would have taken shelter from the storm, and the stupid likely weren’t alive, which left ‘looking for easy prey.’ I’d wait until morning to start looking for actual survivors.

Depending on when morning came.

While I had been doing that, the fireplace warmed the room oh, to well above freezing, which made it positively wonderful. I braved the chill of the rest of the house to go find a kettle and cup in the kitchen, then came back after filling the kettle with some ice.

A few minutes later and I had it sitting in the fire.

Kinda odd. You’d think a house like this would have a rod to hold a kettle above the fire. That’s what most poor families used if they couldn’t afford a heating rune… and since the house had no magic…

Okay, there was time to think of that later. Right now, I’d just sit in front of the fire, enjoying the warmth. Sure, the room was damp, the melting snow hissing in the fireplace, but that’s what a waterproof cloak was for as I sat down, brushing the bulk of the snow that had collected on the floor away.

I waited, listening to the wind moaning outside, the rattle of the house as gusts hit it. The storm seemed to be getting stronger. If I’d arrived even an hour later…

No sense in worrying about it.

I tossed another bit of wood into the fire. And waited until the kettle started to whistle, before I pulled it out with my gloved hands. The steaming water filled the cup and I rooted around in my pack.

Hmmm… Beef Broth… okay. The king hadn’t stiffed me on resources even if I’d have to find food here as quickly as possible. But the smell and then the taste of the rich broth both filled me up, and banished the remaining chill.

One last thing to do. I cleared out a space on the floor away from the fireplace, braving the still cold as hell room, and pulled out a scriber. I wasn’t going to be able to ward the entire house, but I could weave an alarm ritual, granted, not anything that would stop a wizard, but…

Well, I didn’t think there were any here. I cut the sigils into the wood, murmuring the words, slowly collecting the power. That was what made people like me different from wizards. A wizard had developed a wellspring of power. They could work feats with a word that I needed rituals to do.

I completed the diagram and I felt it take.  A house was one conceptual object—a place people lived and the warding now covered it. If anyone, or anything opened the door or came in, I’d know it.

Well unless there were wizards, or spirits or…

I shook my head. I was just gonna stop with “I’d know it.”

I’d have to use the cloak as a floorblanket—there was no way I’d be able to get the floor dry and the bedding above had all been covered in snow.

In here, with the fire going, I was getting warmer. I sat close to the fire, my coat on the floor in front of it, drying off.  A few bits of ice fell from the ceiling as the heat started to fill the room.

I wasn’t warm mind you, but the flickering light and smell of wood smoke was a world better than what had been outside.

As if on command I heard the moan of the wind picking up, the house shaking. The rumble of  far off thunder sounded.

I almost decided to make myself another cup of soup, but…

You have no damned idea how long this storm will last or how far you’ll have to walk before can find more food. At least you don’t have to worry about water.

I looked around, feeding a little more wood into the fire.

It should be a few hours until daybreak, presuming this place had the same day/night cycle as we had back home.

It had magnetic poles, even if  they were…off.

As much as I should sleep, I couldn’t. The moan of the wind, the way the house shuddered now and then…

The emptiness.

This had been someone’s home. And they’d left, never intending on returning. You didn’t do that for a bad winter. If you were leaving for the winter, you locked everything up, packed the sheets away and left.

But they hadn’t.

Maybe a war? Some kind of economic catastrophe? When I had been in early schooling, I remembered the teacher talking about how the Dragon’s Eye mountains had been full of towns, mining the finest quartz… and then a mage had discovered how to purify even low quality quartz. In a year, half the towns were deserted.

Maybe.

But I didn’t think so.

I pulled out the archive and started paging through it. There were thousands of pages, too many to physically be held in a non-magic book, but here they were. Not just rituals. Chapters on spell magic, incantation, formulas… I’d never had anything like it.

And most importantly, the formulas used to hang rituals, to cast one save for the final word, and hold it in your mind.

I could hold one in my mind. Many apprentices couldn’t hold any. But…

Paging through the formula, I nodded. There it was.

A ritual of protection from weather…  It’d not be useful against blades or spells, but it would keep a shell of air around me, cool or warm, and keep the rain and snow off of me. I couldn’t use it for very long—I wasn’t that good, but if I got caught in another outdoor storm the twenty or so minutes it would give me might be the difference between life and death.

I got to work with forcing the sorcery into my mind, feeling the slowly gathered power of the ritual, than containing it. It left a little buzz in my mind, enough to let me know I’d successfully cast the ritual and held it.

And now I—

The alarm ward flared up as something hit the house. Something… soft. And big. It hit the house again.

There was a deep snuffling sound and for a moment I regretted the fire. But…

Don’t be an idiot, the smoke is going up the chimney and the windows are shut…

I reached out and took hold of the knife. Whatever it was was big so it’d have a hard time getting in… unless it just knocked the whole damned house over.

Another soft blow…and then a sound like something was rubbing itself against the house…. And then…

Nothing. Just the wind and storm. The alarm ward went back to normal.

I leaned back, the fire no longer quite so cheerful. But it was keeping me warm.

And I didn’t think I’d have to worry about going to sleep.

Not now.

With that, I just lay there, waiting for the dawn to come… if it ever would.