Ramshackle's New Student

Chapter 3: A Cold Day In Ramshackle

Wearing a sweater, you sit in a mountain of blankets in the Ramshackle dorm common area. You're typing up a paper on potionology herbs associated with healing, and ones that aren't associated with healing that can be used for similar purposes. You're surrounded by books, and somewhere on the table is a mug with something warm in it. You weren't usually one to struggle with the cold, but the fall months really made it apparent to you that this dorm doesn't exactly have heating.

Sunny, shivering, makes his way down the steps.

"___... It's.. So cold.. hahh.." He exhales and you both can see his breath. You pause, staring at him. The only reason you haven't tackled the heater for the building with your own two hands is because it's some kind of magical system. And you haven't got the budget for a full tune up and/or repair, and/or replacement. "This place has to have a heater.. It has to.."

"Here, you get in my blankets, I'll go grab some firewood."

"You're kidding me. Every dorm has a heating system. The whole school is connected, right?"

"Yeah, I don't think we're connected to the school's heating system. And ours hasn't been touched in ninety years. And when I went down to check it out, I found out it uses a magestone. You wanna take a crack at it? We'll have to wait a month for someone to come in and check it out, and if that doesn't work out well, we'll have to wait three months until we have the money to cover replacing it."

"Oh absolutely not." Sunny gripes. "I'm not waiting that long to have heating. We're going down there right now to check this thing out. Is there a manual??"

"Nah, but I've been cobbling together some resources from what I could find in the magical history section of the library and what I could find online from this laptop I borrowed from the school. Seems we're working with something designed.. two centuries ago..? I'm not sure if that's young or old for the appliance though, since in my world 20 years is 'Getting old' in heater appliance years, and 50 years is 'Dinosaur' years for a heater appliance."

A new voice enters the conversation. A shivering, very upset Cable. "I vote we give it a look. I've worked with magic appliances before. Can't be too hard."

Sunny grins, but his body continues to betray him with how freezing he is. You laugh.

"Okay, okay, we'll go downstairs in a bit, but I'm gonna start a fire. Warm up, get cozy, because it'll be cold as hell when we DO head down, and I don't want ya'll freezing."

Getting up from your warmth, Grim cries out, complaining about the cold, having been sitting in your lap to escape it. He burrows his way into your blankets as you head outside to chop some wood. When you return with a basket of firewood, you set up a nice little log house with some tinder in the fireplace. Grim comes over and breathes fire into the fireplace, starting the flames of comfort. You set up the fireplace shield and turn to move back to the couch, only to find your two students burrowed in your blankets, asleep. Must have been hard to sleep in the cold. You chuckle, shaking your head, letting Grim join them. You instead go upstairs to grab your blankets from your bed to come sit on one of the free couches. While up there, you grab one of your cozies.

A cloth bag of dry rice that you stitched when you got here, which you can toss in the microwave and have ready in 4 minutes and thirty seconds. It's incredibly warm and gets you cozy very quickly when put on your feet. The one you used earlier is somewhere under the pile of students on the couch. You snuggle up with your laptop on one of the free couches, continuing your paper while the others sleep. When you get to a finish, you look outside. It's still pretty bright out. The fire has died down to nothing. Perfect time to head down and check out the basement.

"Alright everyone, time to get up."

"..mmnh, wha..?" Grim glances around, peering over to you. "... Nah. It's too cold to move."