Having picked up a water nymph to lead the way on the other side of the pipe portal, the pair of magical girls and their corresponding fmingos headed from the under construction castle along a pathway to the cabin that contained discarded nobles.

  To Alex, the ndscape looked oddly familiar. For some reason, the lyrics for “Oh Canada” stuck in his head. The bck-haired magical girl developed an odd patriotic feeling walking through the damp countryside.

  “There is something about this pce.” Alex gnced to see a familiar-looking creek to the side. “I just can’t put my finger on it.

  Some ducks quacked.

  “Familiar.” Alex let out a ponderous hum.

  “Yes?” Fufi answered Alex, looking at her.

  “I mean this pce.” Alex shook her head. “It is familiar to me.”

  At that moment a bug nded on Alex’s neck and she swatted it, frowning. Removing her hand, she looked at the bug. “Mosquito, I thought I left these things behind back in Saskatchewan. Did Merumeru’s pipe portal take us to another world?”

  Aqua turned back to address them. “Nah, well yes and no. This apparently is a piece of earth, Alex’s nd to be exact from what I can tell. Cosmos brought it here to stop bill collectors from calling and demanding money.”

  “Does that mean they think I’m dead back on earth?” Alex’s face turned into a shocked expression.

  “Don’t know, maybe?” Aqua pondered. “Is dying a way to avoid bill collectors in your homend? That works here unless the rulers are really corrupt and let people go after the family of someone who owes stuff after they died.”

  “I think if someone agrees to do something and then fails then their community should come together and finish what they started.” Ariel gave Aqua a disapproving look.

  Noticing that the Nereid and Sea elf seemed to have some cultural differences, Alex decided to change the subject. “The air here is incredibly humid. It is almost like we are walking through a cloud don’t you think?”

  “I suppose so. Professor Copperpot and I have been up here about a week and we haven’t gotten a clear view of the sun once.” Aqua turned around and kept leading them forward.

  “You got that gnome to come out of his room in the cave?” Alex sounded surprised.

  “It wasn’t too hard.” Aqua’s voice showed pride. “After I scoped the pce out, all I had to do was expin that an isnd in the sky is even more isoted than a cave in the bog.”

  “Is that gnome still trying to turn demons into pigs?” Alex followed the nereid.

  “Yep!” Aqua cheerfully answered, walking on. “We brought all his b equipment and the former demons. He’s got a tent set up for now but wanted a mage tower. Greedy greedy gnome right?”

  “I guess so.” Alex rounded a corner and saw a very familiar cabin with a jeep parked in the driveway. “What! How are we at my home?”

  “It is obvious isn’t it?” Cosmos brought it from your pnet to Terre. “Was that not clear?”

  Alex didn’t think she meant literally. People didn’t just take 40 acres and transport it across time and space. She stood there and gaped like a deer in the headlights.

  “Are you doing okay?” Ariel poked the magical girl. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “After all these months.” Alex let out a breath. “I thought I’d never see this pce again and I’d be spending the rest of my life trying to accomplish an impossible quest.”

  Fufi scoffed. “Don’t be dramatic, magical girls don’t have a limit on their life span.”

  “That just means that the quest to defeat the demon queen could go on forever.” Alex trudged through the woods toward the rustic cabin, inspecting the area.

  Nestled deep within the misty woods, the cabin stood as a solitary sentinel amidst the encroaching wilderness. The air was thick with fog, shrouding the surrounding trees in an ethereal veil. Beside the cabin, a chaotic array of construction materials y scattered: a steel workshop hums with the sound of a running generator. Jerry cans are lined up like soldiers awaiting orders. Rebar twists and turns in a tangled mess, while broken power lines dangle precariously overhead. A tanker semi truck looms ominously, its presence a stark contrast to the natural serenity. Concrete blocks, intended for highway barriers, are haphazardly strewn about, adding to the sense of disarray. The scene is one of eerie juxtaposition, where the tranquility of the forest meets the raw, unfinished edge of human endeavor.

  “Sorry about the mess.” Aqua gave an awkward smile. “It was like this when I got here. Merumeru and Cosmos were building the castle and the weird thing that keeps the mps on ran out of fluid so she stocked up on a bunch of extra.” The nereid pointed to the generator by the workshop building.

  Alex threw his hands up. “There has got to be a million dolrs worth of stuff here. There is no way I could afford all this. Did they just go and do a heist on a construction site?”

  “Heists are a valid way of acquiring materials.” The sea elf added, not helpfully.

  “Shall we greet everyone?” Aqua suggested.

  Alex huffed and followed her to the door. She knocked.

  “Hello?” A familiar middle-aged woman in noble attire answered the door. “Aqua…no wait you are not Aqua. Alex!” She moved to shut the door but regained her composure and straightened her back.

  “Yvne!” Alex gaped. “What are you doing here? Aqua said that Cosmos picked up a family of disgraced nobles, not you.”

  Aqua broke out into ughter. “Ohohoho I might have left the part out that you already knew at least one of the disgraced nobles.”

  Alex gred at the nereid. “Not funny. You should have told me. This woman was trying to turn me into a maid.”

  Yvne bowed deeply and stood up, her cheek twitching. “Won’t you come in? This is your pce after all.”

  Alex took a tentative step then looked at Aqua. “This isn’t some kind of joke anymore right? Because if she’s still demon possessed then this is not funny.”

  “I’m not.” Yvne made a motion with her hand, like someone swinging a *bonk* hammer. “Magical girl Cosmos exorcized me of that terrible thing. Please meet my children Cassius, and Seraphina”

  The two siblings sat on the couch in the foyer. A pair of books corresponding to their seating positions y with bookmarks on the coffee table. Both of them stood when Yvne looked back at them, stepping forward.

  A blue dart of a slime girl shot from her stool and gave Alex an attack hug. “Meru!” She cheered happily.

  “Heya Merumeru. It has been a while.” Alex patted her gooey locks. “I hope you’ve been staying out of trouble.”

  “Meru!” She said again, happy to see Alex after over a month.

  Yvne coughed, “Please introduce yourselves.” She gestured to her children, trying to ignore the hyper slime girl that was ruining the poised atmosphere she was striving for.

  Seraphina curtseyed. “Pleasure to meet you for the first time, Magical girl Alex.”

  “My Lady,” Cassius took Alex’s hand, bowed and gently kissed it. “I am Lord Cassius, and the pleasure is all mine.” The man looked dashing, and Alex’s face reddened.

  Aqua pointed at the young lord and snickered. “All high and mighty, but you know that the three of you are prisoners right? Don’t flirt with the new magical girl.”

  “Far be it from me…” Cassius started, but his mother shot him an ice cold gre and he trailed off.

  Alex looked around. One man, and 2 magical girls, 2 birds, a female sea elf, a female nereid and a slime girl. There was a fairly big imbance in the sexes of this gathering.

  “There are a bunch of maids that are looking for you.” Alex turned his attention back to the matron. “Do you know of a good way to give them their agency back?”

  “I don’t.” Yvne looked down, ashamed. “When I was at the academy I studied etiquette, not demonology.”

  As the magical girl paused to think, Ariel’s gaze homed in on something on one of the shelves. She dashed forward and grabbed a scale model sail ship on a stand. “Wow. Who made this? This is an ambitious model.”

  “That old thing?” Alex walked over to the model ship. “I think it was something that I got from dad. It is the flying cloud. And old ship from over a century ago, getting closer to two.”

  “It looks very fast.” She spun it around in her hands looking at it from different angles. “It has got to be really difficult to crew. Do you know how big the real thing will be?”

  “What do you mean: will be?” Alex gave the sea elf a look. “You are not thinking of building that. You are a magical girl not a shipwright.”

  “If we find a shipwright it could be done.” She tried to take the ship apart. “Hey why doesn’t this come apart? I want to see how many decks it has.”

  “Why would it come apart?” Alex was puzzled. “It is just a decoration. I think it is hollow inside.”

  “Actually, this might help.” Seraphina went over to a shelf and pulled out a picture book. “If you look here, there is a picture of the interior of that same ship.” She held it open for the sea elf. “We’ve read most of the stuff in the house and I thought some of these ships were fascinating. That one looks like it has a hold at the bottom, a deck between there and the stuff that is not quite a level on top of the deck.”

  Ariel sighed and set the ship back down. “She’s a fine ship, but I think she’s built for taking things long distances fast. I don’t think she’d be good at privateering.”

  “There are other ships in here.” Seraphina flipped a few pages. “Look at this one, it is made completely of metal. Some king must have blown his entire fortune to build this monument to hubris. How many bcksmiths does it take to forge such a thing?”

  “Actually, they are made by ironworkers.” Alex corrected the young noble. “Bcksmiths wouldn’t be able to make something so big by just hammering iron ptes on anvils.”

  “Metal worker?” Seraphina tilted her head. “I’ve never heard of this css.”

  “It’s not a css, it is a profession.” Alex scratched her head. “They don’t actually forge the iron, they just take the parts made in a factory and assemble it according to the pn.”

  “Strange. I suppose that you wouldn’t need a team of carpenters and a shipwright to build an iron ship. But still,” She paused. “I can’t see how this wouldn’t take decades to forge all the ptes even with this factory. How many bcksmiths does it employ?”

  “I can’t expin this well.” The magical girl shook her head. “Let's just say it is complicated.”

  Yvne, seeing a chance to interject, spoke up. “Anyway, Magical girl Alice please I must admit my guilt and face any punishment. You and all my people suffered because of me.”

  Alex held her hands up and shook them in disagreement. “You were being controlled, like a puppet. I’m sure you had no idea that as soon as you inherited the nd you’d end up in that state.”

  “I wish that what you say is true.” Yvne sighed and looked up. “Now that I’ve had time to reflect I could see the signs that I was in for a dark fate and I was given a chance to escape it but chose not to.”

  “What do you mean?” Alex regarded the former baroness.

  “When my husband was killed, they hunted down the undead that killed him.” Yvne wrung her hands. “The barony issued the bounty with the help of some of the upper nobility. The revenant came to me before and killed a bunch of the demons. He bade me to flee the barony and forswear serving the king.”

  “Was that the skeleton in the closet?” Alex remembered something important that probably shouldn’t have been forgotten.

  Yvne nodded. “It said that it was one of the former hero’s party members. It had been killing demons this entire time trying to free whatever humans could be saved. He said that my husband had been demon possessed and that is why he killed him. That if I wanted to avoid the same fate as him I needed to take whoever I could find, forsake my css and flee.”

  “And what then?” Alex felt bad, if it was the thing sealed in the coffin, then she left it six feet under.

  “I banished the vile undead.” She sadly mented. “And didn’t heed the warning. Eventually, high enough tiered demons came and sealed him. You see, revenants are minions of the god of grudges. They cannot rest until their grudge is fulfilled. So destroying them only deys them.”

  Alex thought that was terrifying. “They can’t die? Then what happens when they are destroyed.”

  “It weakens them, but someone cannot go below level 1.” Fufi gave the answer this time.

  “That’s really dark.” Alex gave the fmingo a meaningful look.

  “Yeah, if what Yvne said is true, then that revenant has been carrying the shame of being a close friend to the hero that forsook his quest.” The fmingo added. “And it’s been fighting a losing war for the better part of a century and cannot stop, even if it is hopeless.”