I turned around to find Chantelle peeking out from behind a tree five meters away. As soon as she saw me she ducked back behind the tree. I tried to send a sense of safety and curiosity towards her along our connection and she slowly stepped out into view.

She was dressed very warmly in matching green. Gloves, long sleeved dress, overcoat, cloak, and boots, all in some shade of green. The only things not green was the large backpack in brown leather and her snow shoes, which were made of wood and string, and looked much lighter and easier to walk in than my attempt.

"Hello," I said.

"Hello... Who are you?" She asked.

"I'm... uh, I didn't pick a name. I'm a Champion." I said.

"We have stories of Champions." She said. "They can be the greatest heroes, or the worst villains. Judging by how you aren't affected by the cold, your eyes, and that I seem to be drawn to you, you must be aligned with winter and this feeling was a trap. You're here to take me to the winter priests?"

"This might take some explaining, but if I'm aligned with anyone it is you." I said. "I'm here to protect you. What do my eyes have to do with it?"

"Your eyes glow, just as mine do." She said. "Using large amounts of mana to power great spells leaves its mark. The mark of a great mage. Please explain what you meant by being aligned to me."

Well that was awkward, I'd picked glowing eyes because they looked cool. I don't have any mana at all, although my powers will probably count as magic to her. I could feel that she was willing to trust me, but it was a tentative thing. How to explain... All of it from the top, I guess.

"The world is ending." I said. "Somehow affected by an 'Angry God'. I was given the opportunity to choose a group of people, and my goal as a Champion is that my people must survive the end of the world. I narrowed the list of groups down to those that don't follow a god, that are defensive focused on area defences, and that had a group size of one. There were six candidates, and I chose you. Choosing a single person instead of a group gave me a Chosen Person Sense, which tells me how far and in what direction you are. And I can also sense your strong feelings. You should also have gotten a form of the same sense?"

"That is..." She said, trailing off. "Did you almost die, twice, over the past two days?"

"Ah... Yes." I said. "I was summoned into a snow bank with only a robe. And then the shelter I built to sleep in I nearly got stuck in. It has been a difficult few days, though I've been getting better as I've learned how to use my powers. You do have a sense of me, then?"

"I do, but it is something I have always had, though it only gained a direction recently." She said. "I had a feeling of safety and support that was coming from this direction and was getting closer. Though I had started to doubt when I saw signs of the Arachne. There are stories of them luring people into the heart of their nests to feed to their young. And there were Arachne at the village with the priests."

Her eyes welled up with tears at the mention of her village, and I could sense guilt and sorrow from her. I moved to comfort her, and noticed that she was shivering.

"Lets get a fire started, and you can tell me what happened." I said.

I found and cut down an oil tree, which shocked Chantelle. I guess cutting down and pushing over a tree that was nearly a meter wide with no apparent effort wasn't something people did here. Though I did also hear her mutter something to herself about 'Keepers'.

My orb was nearly completely out of energy by now, so I decided to build a small bonfire of only five trees. Small by my standards, there were still over twenty lengths of eight meter long pieces of trunk.

It only took a few minutes to get the bonfire set up. I had to start it before I'd finished collecting the wood so that I could tap its energy.

Chantelle stood close to the fire as soon as I had it started. She was in shock. I continued to build it up, manoeuvring the wood around her.

Once I had the fire set up I cleared an area around it and formed two seats from the earth. My attempt at making a cup was a bit rough, I manipulated the dirt into the right shape and then pushed heat into it until it fused into a sort of glass. I filled it with snow and heated it until the water was almost boiling.

I guided Chantelle to one of the seats I had made and sat her down, wrapping her gloved hands around the cup. She hadn't spoken the entire time I was setting up.

I sat in the seat across from her and tried to send a feeling of safety and support.

"What happened?" I asked gently, snapping her out of her daze.

"A week ago the winter got a lot worse. The temperatures dropped so much that our heat wards that covered the village were struggling, and it started snowing constantly. There was a magic in the air that was causing it, and I worked out a ward setup that stopped it. Yesterday morning, just before I felt my sense of you for the first time, actually, we finished a major working that set up a warded area that covered a ten kilometer sphere. It needed to be so large to noticeably change the weather in the village."

Their ward covered ten kilometers, and that was exactly how far away I had started. It was likely just an excuse for whoever was running the simulation to start me out in such a bad position. Not Chantelle's fault.

"And the ward worked. But early this morning it failed. And then our other wards started failing too. A group of winter priests and Arachne marched into the village, with wagons set up with iron cages on them, and announced that the whole village was to be arrested on a charge of sedition against their god. And that I was to be captured specifically and not killed."

"My mother, the head of the clan, gave me our book of wards and ordered me to run. As I got my winter gear on I heard fighting and people dying and ran into the forest towards the feeling of safety."

I felt a wave of guilt from her. Telling her she had done the right thing wasn't likely to help. But what would...

"If you had stayed, what could you have done?" I asked.

"No-nothing." She sobbed and started crying.

I sat beside her and put my arm around her shoulders.

"And in running you found someone who might be able to help." I said.

"You can save my people?" She asked.

Turning in to my hug, she buried her face against my chest.

"I would need to prepare first." I said. "I'm not much of a fighter at the moment, but I have some ideas as to how to fix that. My goal is for you to survive the end of the world. But I want more than for you to just survive, I want you to be happy. Which I guess means rescuing your people from.. a god... A lot of setup. On the positive side, if this god didn't have a purpose for your people it would have tried to kill everyone rather than arresting them? So we should have time."

"My parents are strong enough to keep them safe, I think." She said.

It had started to get darker as we were talking. Today had seemed even shorter than yesterday, though that could have been all of the running.

"First things first, we need to get around the Arachne maze and back to my shelter." I said.

"Okay... Just a few minutes more?" She said. "I don't know why, but it feels like I have known you forever."

"I was told that we knew each other in a past life." I said. "But we can leave after you are ready."

A minute later her stomach let out a grumble and she blushed bright red. Then laughed when mine did the same.

"I haven't eaten since this morning." She said.

She took her backpack off and opened it in front of her. Digging around, she pulled out a squashed muffin.

"I didn't have enough time to grab much, this muffin was on the table on my way out the door." She said, apologetically.

"Mm, I should be able to fix that." I said, holding my hand out for the muffin.

I formed a table out of dirt and placed a piece of wood and a pile of leaves on it.

Placing the muffin on top of that I flared the bonfire hard and expanded the muffin. It took a bit more energy to do than cloth, but much less than stone. It seemed to be dependant on the density of the material and not its complexity. I stopped when I had enough of the muffin for two large meals with a little left over. Expanding some cloth I wrapped the leftover and gave it back to Chantelle to put back in her pack.

"You can make infinite food?" She asked. "I couldn't even see you using any mana."

"Ah.. I don't have any mana." I said. "I can use heat as an energy source to do some things. Which includes making more of a substance by converting other substances into it."

"That is..." She said, then stopped to think. "That is how you were cutting down the trees and setting them on fire?"

"Yes, its the same power." I said. "I was told that it was a very powerful ability if I could overcome its limitations. But we should head out, we can eat while we walk."

My first bite of the muffin distracted me with its sugary goodness as Chantelle got out a stone that shone with a bright light. It took her asking which way we should go for me to realise I had no idea how to get back to the shelter I had built.