Burning through the Fog

A lot of things go through your head when you are stuck in a closet by a one clawed fog creature that can't die (not that its a common scenario or something, but still).  Like "when was the last time someone cleaned this closet?" or "What is in all these little viles of weird stuff?" you try not to focus on the creature trying to bust through the door. Admittedly this is easier to do when you aren't stuck in a small closet (like one time I got trapped in my study, took me a couple hours to actually deal with the situation, though that wasn't some seafood monster, that was some crazy salesman lady, sadly she was harder to get rid of).  The creature sensing me trying to ignore it away burst it's claw arm through the door right above my head (thank the gods I'd turned my head to try and make out a label for something prior, see procrastination saves lives!)

See the thing about being a magic user is that sometimes when you are startled you can have an accidental reaction.  Its why doing little spook scares of someone who can conjure fire, is a horrible damn idea! When the claw burst through the door fire exploded in the closet which ignited the cleaning chemicals, I went from being safe if not trapped to being in the middle of a damn flaming inferno. As a plus the excess light made my attacker momentarily distracted/disappeared, as a negative the fire spread fast and soon the whole station was burning. Which kept the fog at bay, at least (and drove the weird claw creature back).  It also kind of drove away the sleepyness, not exactly something I could capitilize on because THE ENTIRE STATION WAS ON FIRE!!!

Sadly this showed me the train was not in the station (naturally), but a hand cart was.  With lantern in hand and the building burning all around me I made my way to the cart dodging flaming debris as I went.  The cart was the standard type if you've ever seen one (if not basically a small train car with a central pump handle to drive it forward and a pole to hang a lamp on).  I didn't have time to really do anything other than hang the lamp, sheath my sword and start hammering away at the pump to move the cart as far away from the station as possible. Thankfully no seafood monster attacked me while I got away from a completely accidental fire that destroyed the train station.

In the game of winning and losing I'd won a train cart to move on hopefully towards the factory (if the tracks hadn't been destroyed along the way that is).  I'd lost all the supplies I'd had to leave behind at the dockmasters office, destroyed a train station, and was literraly on a track to perhaps my own destruction. Another thing I discovered? Manual labor freaking sucks, pumping that handcart down the track was so much exertion.  I knew at the time I was not taking another job for adventuring if they couldn't tell me how much actual effort was needed! A policy I continue to fail at to this day.