The next day, Marina set out, and other people looked at maps trying to make a pn to clear the harbor district quickly, secure the boat and leave in the middle of the night.

  Alex, going stir crazy, decided to do a bit of spear fishing. She deployed her underwater doll and zoomed around the shallows they were in until she managed to spear a medium sized fish. The problem was that spearing a medium sized fish for a doll was in fact a small fish for humans. So she dumped it on board and had the doll she was possessing dive back down to spear a rge fish.

  The day passed and they were able to give everyone from the flotil some grilled fish to go along with the food they had stored. Sadly, because they were not pnning on being here long there was a huge store of food. Yeah, they brought a lot of food, making some of the boats difficult to walk through but with their squad of people it wouldn’t st more than a month alone, so supplementing it was a good idea.

  Merumeru came back first again, after sundown. She hopped on board in her cute frog outfit. In her arms was a simir sailor doll. That she handed to Alex.

  “Meru.” Merumeru smugly procimed.

  Alex examined the doll. “Hmmm, This one is a fake as well.”

  “Ruuuuuu.” Merumeru defted.

  “Where’d you find this one?” Ariel asked the slime girl.

  “Meru meru meee.” Merumeru expined.

  “You could also see that one in the window?” Ariel sounded baffled.

  Alex thought she understood what was going on. “Maybe they are pced about the city as bait?”

  “Probally for me.” Alex quietly stated. “Yvne said that demons can use personal items to invade people’s dreams.”

  Merumeru sorted through her pockets and pulled out a red glowing stone and set it on the table. “Meru!”

  “What’s that?” Alex eyed the glowing object.

  “It is a fire stone.” Ariel transted. “Merumeru found it in the basement of one of the noble houses. Said that you can put it in a furnace to keep warm.”

  Merumeru, still wearing her frog suit, waved and headed back out into the water to go look for what was hopefully going to be the right doll this time.

  “Does it get cold enough to need that?” Alex looked around for a pce to put the stone. She pced it inside the galley stove. The boat wasn’t very big so it didn’t have a dedicated heater. “I suppose we can find a use for this somehow.”

  “We picked up a few from Yvne’s mansion.” Fufi commented. “What happened to them?”

  Alex tried to think about the boatloads of things people moved but couldn’t recall. “Not sure.”

  Like the previous day, Marina came back after dark to give a report.

  “We got word to shipwright Donald’s crew.” Marina wrung her hair out, making a small puddle in the lower decks. “He says that the ship is good enough to sail a couple days but isn’t quite as finished as he’d like. But they’ll need some time to sneakily get staged to have his people and their families on board all at once so no one will get any wind of them deserting and leaving their posts.”

  Alex grumbled. “I was hoping we’d be out of here more quickly. Every day we stay here feels like we are testing fate.”

  Pns were already in motion for smuggling citizens and the extremely rge ship in the middle of the night. Marina expined that what they would have to do is clear out the harbor district of demons and prevent anyone from raising an arm. This would be easier right now because of all the mess going on with mister skeleton causing havoc to the north. The war with the ice demons caused an exodus of a rge number of the demons to fight them. And a great deal of those forces didn’t come back. So while there were still a huge amount of demons in the kingdom, they were shifted away from the capitol at least in terms of forces that would clog the streets, forcing suffering on any human that they came across to fulfill their contract with the demon queen.

  Once again Alex went to sleep and was pgued by lewd dreams.

  This time Yvne’s son and the dream version of her were walking along the beach, holding hands. But unlike the previous time she had a tail that was fully dispyed, its spade tip swished back and forth seductively when the walked.

  Alex, bound within the confines of a dream, found herself not in her usual form, but transformed into a succubus. Again, she was a powerless observer, unable to interact with the saccharine dispy unfolding before her eyes.

  Dream Cassius, a figure of exaggerated romanticism, spoke with the eloquence of a seasoned poet. "Oh, Alex," he began, his voice a melodic baritone, "were I a painter, I would need a thousand hues to capture the blush of thy cheek, and still fall short of thy splendor. Each pigment would pale in comparison to the delicate flush that graces thy skin."

  Dream Alex, a vision of ethereal beauty, responded with a delicate blush that spread across her cheeks, a hand instinctively rising to touch the warmth there. A soft sigh escaped her lips, a silent testament to the impact of his words.

  Cassius, emboldened by her reaction, continued his ardent decrations. "Roses bloom in envy of thy lips," he procimed with gusto, his voice resonating with theatrical passion. "Their petals, though soft and vibrant, cannot compare to the intoxicating allure of thy smile. And the dawn itself deys its coming, hoping to steal one st gnce at thy sleeping face, yearning to bask in the radiant glow of thy slumber."

  Dream Alex, her eyes sparkling with an inner light, offered a subtle, almost imperceptible smile. The corners of her mouth turned upwards just so, a silent acknowledgment of his poetic fervor.

  Cassius, reaching the crescendo of his romantic outpouring, decred, "If beauty were a kingdom, thou wouldst reign eternal, a sovereign unsurpassed in grace and charm. And I, thy most devoted subject, would kneel gdly at thy feet, a loyal servant forever in awe of thy magnificent presence." He delivered this final pronouncement with a flourish, his gaze fixed on Dream Alex with an intensity that bordered on worship.

  The real Alex, however, trapped in her succubus form, seethed with a growing frustration at this eborate, nauseating farce. The saccharine dispy, the poetic pronouncements, and her inability to intervene ignited a spark of irritation within her. With a swift, sudden movement, she swiped at the dream-forged pair with her long, bck cws, a futile attempt to shatter the illusion that held her captive. Her frustration, a tangible entity, was the only real thing in this fabricated world.

  Alex woke from her dream to a fmingo shouting at her and shaking her. “Alex! Alex! What’s going on? You are thrashing about in your sleep.”

  “Ugh,” Alex grasped her hands together and talons poked her hands. “Ouch.”

  She held her hand up and saw that her fingernails were now bck and sharp. She looked to the side of her bunk and saw that the dream catcher was broken again.

  “Your hands!” Fufi gasped.

  “Ack!” Alex hid her cws from the fmingo. “You were not supposed to find out.”

  Fufi eyed the broken dream catcher, and then the magical girl sitting on her hands. “This is really bad.”

  A little fairy fluttered into the room, another fmingo following. “What happened? Are we under attack?”

  “Alex has a demon transformation problem.” Fufi stated bluntly.

  Ariel flew circles around Alex, inspecting her. “I don’t see it.”

  “She’s been hiding it.” Fufi expined. “A succubus has been targeting her in her dreams.” The fmingo gestured her beak to the broken dream catcher.

  “That’s not good.” Ariel sounded genuinely concerned. “I’ve known other magical girls that have suffered that fate. They can’t level and they need to cultivate lust to survive. It is a fate that forces them to take their own life or turn to the demons for help.”

  Alex gulped. “It can’t be that serious.”

  Everyone gave Alex a concerned look, like she was deceiving herself.

  “Anyway, I don’t think our sneaky approach is going to work.” Ariel fretted. “Those fake dolls were traps. I think the demons were waiting for someone to come looking for the doll that was missing because they knew it would be a fatal weakness for Alex. And when some of those dolls started going missing the king’s court figured out that a magical girl was around and now would be a good time to retaliate.”

  “I can just fix the dream catcher again.” Alex grabbed the dream catcher, but everyone stared at her newly formed bck cwed fingernails.

  “That is only a temporary fix.” Fufi sounded worried. “I know, how about we go back to the temple of purity and get them to restore you back to being a human?”

  Alex felt a foreboding feeling. “That pce creeps me out.”

  “I can’t go back through the forest in the winter.” Ariel also sounded worried. “I am not sure what kind of game the winter court is pying but going back seems like it would be admitting defeat.”

  “It won’t even be a permanent fix.” Fumi added. “Unless you can find an enchanter that is better than the tier 3 demon they’ll break the defenses eventually. I’m surprised that we’ve not had problems with dream attacks earlier.”

  “Yeah, you’d think that they would have got after you right after they figured out you were a magical girl and captured your doll.” Fufi pondered.

  “I don’t think these concrete boats can go up river all the way to the portal on the river isnd.” Ariel tapped the bulkhead. “They have too much draft. Hmmm, maybe take the airboat? I can use my powers to help you go at least that far.”

  It sounded like everyone had decided for Alex to go back to the temple of purity. So, after repairing the dream catcher. The pair of magical girls dropped the air boat into the ocean, gathered their fmingos and headed back to the bar of the river.

  It was a terrible trip. The air boat was about the worst type of boat to cross the bar. Luckily Ariel’s skills kept them from capsizing the boat and getting pulled out to sea.

  Alex fretted about leaving Merumeru, Mariel and the rest of the people to complete the flying cloud heist alone but was reassured that they could handle it.

  For yet another weird reason, there was a heavy fog along the river when the sun came up and the winds were loud. They made it up the river without getting attacked by demon patrols. After a couple days of motoring up river they arrived at the isnd Merumeru made. For going back to the new settlement they were evacuating the refugees to.

  “We should part ways here.” Ariel hugged Alex’s face, though she was so small Alex couldn’t return the hug.

  “You are heading back?” Alex eyed the boat and then the fairy and fmingo.

  “You’ll need that to get to the swamp portal.” Ariel pointed at the boat. “I can just go back to the isnd and get another crew and head back out to meet the people at anchor. They might not even be there anymore.”

  Alex nodded. She summoned the carriage on the isnd and pyed dress up with Ariel to get her dressed like a mini plumber. The fairy and the fmingo hopped into the portal and vanished to the other side.

  Alex and Fufi got back in the boat after a quick nap. They headed into the swamp and in the course of another day arrived at the grotto where the portal that led back to the pipe nexus would be.