An Arcane Engineer in Another World: Book I, Exile, chapter 3.

Several hours passed and the snow fall and winds slowly started to decline. Better, the darkness around the covered windows started to vanish.

I pulled out my watch, a gift when I’d first become an apprentice, the best, spell reinforced steel and springs. I knew when I’d been sent here, and it was getting dark so…

The day/night cycle was close to what home was like, so no thirty-day nights. That meant that I wasn’t at the poles.

Of course I could be just about anywhere else. I put the last few bits of wood in, and waited until the light stabilized. It was still gray outside, the sun covered by the clouds, but I could see.

And I’d first look outside the second-story window. I moved as quietly as I could, heading up.

I waited, listening, but there was nothing outside save for the soft moaning of the wind. I finally got up some courage and pushed the ice-coated drapes aside…

And saw nothing. Any tracks must have been filled in overnight.

I checked another window… nothing on that side.

So what the hell was it? I shook my head and went back down. Now I needed to figure out what I’d be doing.

The first thing I did was look around for any books. I probably couldn’t read them but…

I picked up one book, a hardback with an illustration on the cover.

Huh. I could read them, even though the alphabet was different.

MY BURNING HEART! A ROMANCE IN THREE PARTS.

What the hell? There were spells and enchanted devices to let you speak a language, but almost none of them worked on the written word. Soul magic needed a soul to work off of, and a book didn’t have a soul.

 “I guess my teacher was wrong. We didn’t learn everything the City Builders knew,” I said to the empty air.

Still, I probably had better things to do than read a romance.

But they had printing. Just like us.  You couldn’t use cheap printed books for inscribing spells. Some of the material behind it, but the actual formula were complex, more like illustrations than text, so they were printed like illustrations, one to a page, and since they had to be exact, even the best print house had to redo their plates after more than a hundred copies.  But cheap novels, news-sheets?  That was common, but that meant cities.

“But not some kind of nomadic tribe,” I said, looking around. Most of the books were some variant on romance novels, a few with the kind of covers that might get you a visit from the Regulators if you stuck them where some lady’s kids could see them.

Neat, wonderful and absolutely useless for—“hang on.” I murmured, as a larger book appeared behind piles of soft-cover romances. “Atlas of the Third Republic…”

Okay, they have a Republic, if that means what it means back home. Unlike the other books, it was fairly high quality, smooth, shiny pages and maps. Oh gods of Earth and Air, lots of maps.

The Republic was huge, occupying most of one continent, with another linked to it. I blinked.

Not much history. Supposedly, they’d had a failed revolution in…

1776? I wondered what happened to start that calendar? Some king or another deciding he needed a new calendar? Didn’t matter. About thirty years later, they’d become something called a… Dominion? There was more stuff in there, mentions of wars, even…

Wow, that wasn’t an illustration. It was something else. Black and White, but… not an illustration or a magical recreation.

HENRY FORD AND HIS MODEL S STEAMER.

Whatever the hell that was.

But the best part of it was that whoever had owned the book liked to note places they’d been and on one page, dogeared in a way that would have a librarian demand a return to the Inquisition, was a note—“our home.” A picture on it, a couple of people, some kids… The house I was in, and another picture showing the house and… A grove of orchards…

Wait a minute. I grabbed the book and went out the door, pausing just a moment to make certain nothing had come back around. The sun was a dim white orb in the sky, the air was crisp and cold…

And as I came around the house I saw it. Endless lines of trees I’d missed in the night.

Frozen, dead, trees.

Fuck.

You might leave a house if there was a blizzard. If it was bad enough you might never expect to come back. But the only reason you’d plant orange trees was if you never expected there was going to be a blizzard. Not even in winter.

So they stayed here, and something changed… Changed fast.

I paced down the rows of frozen trees. Some of them had frozen leafs still attached to them and there were fruit rinds on the ground, here and there.

If it had just been a change in weather, they’d have stopped watering them long before things got like this… if it was just a single storm, they wouldn’t have run. The house was big, you could put food in it, put covers over the trees, use burners or spells to keep them warm…

But they hadn’t. They’d left. And now I was certain. They’d left fast. Leaving the door open hadn’t been some kind of statement—the last person out didn’t even think about closing it.

“Fuck.” I said again, because thinking it didn’t seem to do the situation justice. I was already shivering, so I went back into the house where the warmer air (I hadn’t left the door open) made things a little bit better. My coat was dry, so I quickly put it back on.

“Can’t stay here, Marcus,” I said to myself. “Summer’s not coming back, and even if you have a month of food…” I could get trapped in another storm, and some cold storms back home lasted for weeks.

It wouldn’t take many of those to make me a permanent resident, dying because I’d waited too long.

But… I had a map. And I also had a location.

In front of the fireplace, after I’d kindled anther fire in it, the pot with some snow melting in it to get ready for my breakfast, I went over the maps.

“Tarleton-Town,” I murmured. By the measurement, it was 22 miles away, which I could understand.

Normally about a day of brisk walking.

But with the snow…

Best case, absolutely best case, two days.

I looked up at the sky. The clouds were there, but they didn’t look threatening… not yet.

Should I…

Don’t be an idiot Marcus… By the time I was ready to leave it’d probably be around midday. I needed to maximize the daylight I’d have marching, and leaving in the morning might mean only one night in the open instead of two. And that might be the difference between living and dying—or being eaten by whatever had been sniffing around last night.

No, once I got started there’d be no going back. After a quick breakfast, the hot broth keeping me warm, I got to work. I’d spent time in the mountains during winter, the cheap places apprentices could afford. Even there, getting caught out at night was no joke, and those were places where you knew help was on the way.

No. I’d go tomorrow. But today… I’d get to work.

The first thing I did was started with the remaining blankets. I grabbed the best ones and pulled them down the stairs, ignoring the crackling sound of the ice. There was a clothesline out back and I was gonna use it. I put the blankets on the line, and then got to work with my hatchet. The remains of chairs and other furniture quickly built up and soon I had a fire burning on both sides.

The smoke might attract someone. I didn’t think so.

But honestly, the emptiness was getting to me. If someone did show up, I’d trust in my fast talking to keep me alive. Inside, I got to work making a sled. I’d found some tools in a large room set behind the house, with a concrete floor that was oddly oily. I didn’t care.

It looked like hammers and nails were the same on any world. And with that I got to work making a sled. The snow had been thick enough that a sled would be the best way of moving things, and if things got nasty, I could abandon it and run. I also could make a pair of snow shoes out of the wood and fabric from the drapes, not great, but better than boots.

By the time I was finished the sun was setting and the wind was kicking up, little tumbling flurries of snow starting. It didn’t look like it would be as bad as the storm I’d come into, but it was time to get in. The blankets weren’t entirely dry but they were no longer sodden, and I could finish that inside. I had the baggage for the sled ready—chopped wood for a fire, long sticks for a shelter, a place for the blankets that would serve to make a tent. Even the little kettle I’d been using would come along, since it’d be a perfect way to heat water if I needed it.

Now, for the last thing. I’d picked out four stones, the best I could find under the snow. Smooth, rounded, about the size of my fist.

I started scribing symbols into them. Vaish, the symbol of the sun in the ancient language. Modern day it was a symbol for heat. It wouldn’t make the stone hot but it would make it retain heat better than any normal material. I carefully inscribed several on the stone, in a precise arrangement.

The good news was I was used to this. Heat stones were some of the most common things people bought, since you chucked them into a fire and then they stored the heat until you released them. And unless you wanted to spend a lot of money on a vanity item, they only lasted a few weeks before you had to re-inscribe them.

Not a problem for me.

Four was all I could do, but as I finished, them, I rolled them into the fire place. A few hours later, and they were fully charged,the symbols dimly glowing with a yellow light. I touched them, and they were slightly warm to the touch, but they wouldn’t give up their full treasure until I wanted them to.

Which was another reason to not go running out this morning.

Then I leaned back. I’d set the alarm ward, and I was as ready as I could be. For about an hour I amused myself by sending little bobbing spheres of light, each one a different color, bouncing around the room. Then I shook my head, and moved a little closer to the fireplace. I watched the flickering, teasing fire.

It’s gonna be a while before I have another fireplace, so I’d best make use of it. Not long after that, I was asleep.