When the magical girl and fmingo arrived at the swamp grotto it felt wet and cold. This part of the nd wasn’t covered in show but in the middle of winter it was humid and the wind chills were no joke. Not many signs of life showed in the swamp, no frogs, no insects, everything sleeping through the colder months. Likewise, the grotto had a hush. There was no Aqua, no visible nymphs, Professor Copperpot's old room had nothing but the left overs that he didn’t take to the sky isnd.
“I’m so tired.” Alex stared about the area with bleary eyes. “How long have we been traveling?”
“We are almost there.” Fufi comforted. “You haven’t really been sleeping. Is the dream catcher okay? I can keep an eye open and wake you up if you get any nightmares.”
“Okay, Maybe I’ll just take a short nap.” Being dead tired, Alex summoned the carriage, cooked some food and headed to bed.
Fufi didn’t say much, not wanting to put more of a burden on the magical girl.
Alex passed out as soon as her head hit the pillow.
That night another succubus induced dream came to her. It again was the pair, slightly transformed Alex, she was standing on the rails at the bow of an ocean liner and the noble held her around the midsection. She had her arms out like she was flying over the ocean while a certain song pyed about someone’s heart going on.
The dream ended abruptly with a painful feeling of pecking and the sound of honking.
“Waaaa.” Alex snapped bolt upright in bed to see a fmingo on top of her, trying to wake her up.
“Wake up!” Fufi shouted. “The demons are invading your dreams!”
Alex gnced around at and noticed her phone lighting up with pending notifications.
She picked it up and unlocked it.
[Demonic Corruption 20%]
[Mental Resistance +1, System rejected due to demonic corruption]
“Oh no.” Alex got out of bed and looked in a mirror.
The magical girl gnced at her stat sheet:
Name: Alex Parker
Css: Magical Girl
Level: 7
Sex: Female
Race: Human
Strength: 11
Constitution: 9
Dexterity: 17
Intelligence: 14
Cuteness: 27
Skills:
Cleaning: 4
Cooking: 2
Dancing: 2
Tailoring: 4
Toymaking: 5
Feats: Empower Doll
Crafting: Force Imbuement
Possess Doll
Puppet Contingency
Spells: Animate DollMagical Girl Transformation
Lesser Grow Pnts
Traits: Mental Resistance: 4 3
Fufi noticed her tail, which was unfurled. She gasped.
Alex inspected herself, it looked like she had a rash on several parts of her skin. They were an unnatural purple.
“This is getting harder and harder to hide.” Alex grumbled.
“Should we head out right away then?” Fufi sounded worried. “We can go through the pipe and leave a note for Bob and Martha, then hop right to the temple.”
“We need to get the sleds swapped out.” Alex pointed down. “They are at the sky isnd.”
“Lets get you changed and I’ll just go and get some of the people building Merumeru’s castle to help take it to the pipe portal back to the nexus.” Fufi presented a simple pn.
In agreement to minimize interaction, Alex got dressed in the plumber outfit, headed through the portal with Fufi and came out on the other side of the pipe nexus. Winter was in full swing at Bob and Martha’s farm. The entire area was covered in snow. Some chickens huddled together in their little forts on top of the stone wall, and the apple tree had lost all of its leaves.
A bit wet from the pcement of the portal pipe, Alex dusted the water off using her feather duster and found a good spot to summon the carriage.
Fufi took the portal up to the sky isnd.
The bck-haired magical girl had to wait. Alex cooked some tea and spent some time making some very long gloves that went most of the way up her arm, ending just shy of her shoulders. She settled on a deep, rich indigo fabric for the gloves, the color almost masking the slight, dark purple discoloration on her own skin underneath. This new costume element was crucial for hiding the strange marks that had appeared following her st transformation.
She also focused on crafting a veil. That was tricky. She wanted it to be cute and stylish, something that flowed nicely with her magical girl outfit, yet still managed to obscure the lower half of her face. Crucially, she wanted to avoid any resembnce to a traditional hijab, opting for a design that felt distinctly magical and modern. After several attempts, she found a nice medium with a piece of fabric that was incredibly thin, almost gossamer, giving it a slight transparency. This allowed it to hide the worst of her skin's appearance, the purple blotches that looked distressingly like fresh bruises, without completely concealing her identity. The fine material caught the light delicately, giving an ethereal impression to her facial features.
The broken dream catcher got repaired again. Some protection from dream attacks was better than nothing and it didn’t take the brown-eyed girl long to sew it back together.
Alex had enough time to finish making a message for Bob and Marth and posting it on the pipe gate that a certain slime girl built.
Fufi flew up from the portal pipe. “I brought help!"
Zeke and Trudy emerged from the portal pipe. They wore matching plumber outfits.
Zeke looked like he was no longer mostly female. “Hello.” He said, one of the ski’s for the carriage over his shoulder.
Trudy followed after, also hauling the other ski. “Fufi said you were going to the temple and that you’d need this.”
“Thanks.” Alex got working on taking off the wheels and repcing them with the sleds and other things needed to prepare the carriage for cold weather, like dressing it back in the bunny insuting cover. “How have things been? I’ve known we’ve been gone for a while. Things got a bit hectic.”
“Fufi filled everyone in.” Zeke helped with the conversion of the carriage. “The castle is mostly done. Most everyone from the vilge has been staying there. We ran out of that diesel stuff. But we made a bunch of things. There are a ton of doll parts and mechanical parts, Professor Copperpot was able to make a bacteria that can turn the stuff in the trine into that brown fluid the generator used to lubricate.”
“Motor oil?” Alex provided the answer.
“Yeah that is it.” Zeke nodded. “Anyway, I like the new look. You seem a bit more mature and that looks like the start of a new outfit. I like it, almost like some kind of exotic dancer.”
Trudy poked Zeke. “Zeke, that is a bit lewd to just say that she looks all sexy like that.”
Alex awkwardly chuckled, it wasn’t her intention to create something that looked sexy but making such a mistake boded ill for things to come.
“It wasn’t intentional, I need to get bundled up anyway.” Alex showed them the outfit for the arctic biome from the carriage. “Let me get changed really quick, and I can turn the carriage back into a card. If you see Bob and Martha let them know we are okay. Most everyone got out of town and are set up on an isnd west of the capitol.”
Trudy nodded. “Aqua kept us informed. That whole trick to get the demons to attack each other was brilliant.”
The pair helped finish the carriage, and after getting changed, Alex returned the carriage to card form, hopped into the portal and came out into an excessively cold bst. Thinking quickly, she summoned the carriage, brought Fufi inside, started a fire and got changed into warmer clothing.
“It is so much worse than the st time.” Fufi huddled close to Alex.
Alex stoked the stove, shivering until the fire got going. The worst part was having to switch out of the plumber outfit right after the cold hit.
“Remind me never to come here in the winter again.” Alex sparked a fire and got some water poured to make tea.
After warming up, the pair started the journey through the now-thick snow. The fresh powder made it harder to move but the craftsmanship of the carriage upgrades were good. At times when Alex thought they were for sure to get stuck and start spinning out that didn’t happen, they kept going.
“Did you learn anything about how the flying cloud operation went?” Alex asked Fufi. Things were going slow so they could sip tea and drive at the same time.
“Aqua had been coming and going a bit.” Fufi mused. “She wasn’t there when I stopped by but she’s been spreading news. Apparently it was a success. There was news of a human attack on the waterfront district where demons were defeated, people kidnapped and their new ship stolen.”
“Looks like they didn’t find the missing sailor doll.” Alex focused back on the terrain. The sun was rising and things were going to get very bright in a little bit.
Fufi hung her beak. “Maybe Merumeru is still looking.”
They arrived at the temple in the night after plowing a new path through the snow. The clergy guarding the gates greeted the familiar pair and let them in. By this point, everyone knew about the carriage. Alex changed into the veil and gloves, alongside the long skirt of the toymaking outfit. It didn’t quite match, which irked her but the idea to not cause an uproar by some kind of misunderstanding felt more important.
Some of the maids came to greet them and get the ice that was crusted to the carriage free.
“What brings you here in the middle of winter?” One of the Ekta’s greeted them.
“I need to get purified.” Alex looked around, not wanting to make a scene. “I have a simir problem like the maids did with demonic magic.”
The priest hmmed. “You don’t look like a harpy or a maid. I’m not sure what the problem is.”
Eventually, Alex met with one of the older priests who expined that they understood the problem and could prepare the hot springs. But the chamber was unused in the winter because it was too difficult a flight for harpies during the cold season. So they could rest until morning and get started then.
