Shiv was starting to get nervous. The smell of smoke was getting stronger and stronger the closer he got to his farm. He still had a half hour of walking till he got there, but decided to pick up the pace.
"Blaze, that smell better not be because of you…" He muttered, and increased his pace even more.
Soon, he was running. He had been on the road for several days, first traveling away, and now traveling back, and he was exhausted. But the smell of smoke seemed to burn his tiredness and soreness away, replacing it with nervous energy.
He passed through the town in a flash, alarming several of the residents, including the fat general store owner. Then, he was running through the woods. The sounds of frogs and toads croaking and leeches flying was barely noticeable over the constant downpour of rain. Then far, far too soon, he was out of the woods. 'What? The trip to the farm usually takes twice this long, even when running.' He came to an abrupt stop in the treeless, empty area and saw… destruction.
All his eyes could see was rain cascading on blackened, sooty, and open ground littered with quite a few skeletons.
"Oh no." He immediately began sprinting, checking the charred bones as he went, making sure none of them were either of the forms of his companions.
Soon, he made it to the stream and followed it to the original clearing, which was still miraculously walled in. He didn't have any trees to climb over the wall, so he simply slammed his fist into it and made a portion of it sink into the ground, granting him entry. Inside, he found a naughty wolf licking his fur while a cute little girl carefully blew dark red fire on a single plot of slightly scorched plants carefully protected from the rain by some rather large leaves that had been shoved into the ground nearby.
That row, aside from a single tree with a stone treehouse, was the only sign of plantlife in the entirety of his former farm.
Shiv walked slowly into the clearing and sat down heavily beside the wolf. They both sat in silence, watching Blaze as she worked, one amused and the other feeling dead inside.
Eventually, Shiv quietly asked, "You guys make it OK?"
"Of course. Our little Blaze is quite the firecracker it turns out… as you can see." Uriel said, looking around. "It was quite the sight. You should have been here."
Shiv nodded, all of the tiredness suddenly catching up to him and pressing down with force. "I just have one question, if that's alright."
"You seem worn down, so I suppose I'll allow it."
Shiv nodded yet again, feeling like his head was a rocking horse. "The rain. It's pouring buckets night and day, and yet…" He gestured at his surroundings. "How?"
"I told you. Blaze is quite the firecracker. It is quite strange for such a young girl to have flames so deadly, but perhaps that is in part, your fault."
"Huh. Well, you two ready to go on a trip?"
"Daddy! You're back!" Suddenly, Shiv was tackled to the ground by a ball of pure energy that hugged him fiercely. Then she stood up and pointed at the plants she had been tending excitedly. "Do you see? Do you see? I kept your special plants safe!"
Shiv couldn't help it: he smiled. 'At least she's alright.' He put a hand on her head and looked her in the eyes. "You did a good job, kiddo. The special plants look great. But uh, why were you burning them?"
She preened under the praise and attention, then at his question excitedly said, "I know you said to water them, but every time I watered them they looked so sad. So I thought about what makes me happy, and flames make me happy, so I set them on fire! Well… I tried. But they wouldn't catch. They just sucked my fire up like water, so I thought- what if they drink fire instead of water, and I kept giving them fire until they grew up nice and pretty! Aren't you so, so proud of me?" She beamed.
'That's why the farmer laughed at me and said he didn't think I could grow them!' Shiv thought back to the shady traveler who'd sold him the seeds in the first place. "You did an awesome job, Blaze." He patted her head and looked around trying to decide if he should ask what had happened to the rest of his farm. In the end, he just said, "Guess what I got while I was gone?"
"A new friend!?" She asked with wide eyes.
"What? No. Well… maybe. But that's not important." He held up a hand and snapped his fingers, causing a flame to ignite, then sputter out from the rain. He glared at his hand and just set the whole thing on fire.
"You can make fire too!?" Her mouth dropped open.
Uriel spoke up. "You are going to have to teach him, Blaze. You two can play school together. You can be the teacher and teach him how to use fire."
The idea delighted her, and she immediately began chattering away about getting chalkboards and other supplies.
Shiv put his hands up to try to stop the flood of words and to stop the shopping list from growing any longer. "Hey, hey, hey. How would you like to go get all that stuff in a few days? I have to go to the capital, and I'm sure they've got all the supplies you'll ever need there, alright?"
'She's already so big on shopping, and she's not even a decade old. What's going on here?'
She was happy with the idea, so he stood up and looked around with one last sad look in his eyes. Shaking his head, he turned to the last plants on his farm. "What do you guys say we go ahead and harvest these before they turn into ash, too?"
***
The plants were different from every other plant he'd ever grown, in that they didn't produce food, but roses. There was also the fact that they apparently lived off of fire, instead of water. The roses had strong healing properties, and were extremely hard to come by, despite their incredibly fast growth rate. Shiv again attributed it to their strange needs.
Because of that rarity, and their use, Shiv was betting that they'd provide him with a great deal of XP, and also turn a tidy profit in town.
He was correct. Far more so than he would ever have thought.
He set about gently harvesting the plants with his little helper following closely behind, telling him the names of each rose and what they were like. At first, he was hesitant to touch them, because Blaze had been burning them only moments before, but he was pleasantly surprised to find that the plants were cool to the touch.
Reassured, he gripped the plant at the very bottom, close to the roots, and gently pulled up. Instantly, power filled him. It wasn't as much as he had absorbed when he'd killed the experimenters, but it was close.
Putting the rose into his timeless inventory with a quiet, "abracadabra," he excitedly moved on to the next, and the next… until he'd gotten all of the plants and leveled up several times.
Shiv couldn't believe his eyes. There, blinking just in front of him, was a set of glowing words that were a mix of red, brown, blue, and gold.
[Congratulations, Trespasser. You've ascended to level (25). Here's your status screen.]
[Name: Shiv]
[Level: 25]
[Magical Tree Affinity: Mismatched Blessed]
[Abilities: Improved Manipulation {Touch} (Earth), Limited Creation (Fire), Imbue {Touch} (Aether), Weak Heal {Touch} (Water)]
[Class Abilities: Inventory, Heroic Presence, Heroic Appraisal, Status Screen]
He grinned and happily said, "It's about freakin' time."
With the harvest finished, Shiv and Blaze grabbed a few of the things she wanted to take with her on the journey, and set out with Uriel in tow.
Blaze chattered on and on endlessly as they walked through the big open clearing she had created, about all of the adventures she'd had in Shiv's absence. Despite how much she talked, he heard nothing about how the forest and his farm had been burned down.
They made it to town and were met by haggard-looking townspeople who cheerfully greeted Shiv. He noticed that the town itself looked like it had taken a bit of a beating, though from what, he couldn't say.
They didn't stay for too long, only stopping to get Blaze some food and a cloak when she continuously insisted that she was starving and freezing.
"How can you be freezing!? The rain is literally hotter than my shower on earth could go."
"I have fire infinity." She replied simply.
"You mean affinity. And I have the same! But here I am, boiling alive."
She took a big bite of her hog meat and said something that sounded suspiciously like, "you're weird."
Shiv looked at her with narrow eyes, then dismissed it with a shake of his head.
"Hey, daddy? Are they plants?" She pointed with her meat at a group of folks sitting at another table in the bar, nursing drinks.
"What? No, they're not plants." Shiv replied incredulously.
Her eyes lit up. "Destroy!"