Fufi considered the broken ballista. “Do you think that Lily could use her empower shot with a siege weapon?”

  Alex considered this. “Perhaps? To tell you the truth, I keep forgetting that it is an option.”

  Fufi nodded her beak. “I was just thinking, maybe look for a good opportunity to use it. Like in the fight with the demon you didn’t use it there either.”

  “For that fight, I didn’t think about it until we ran out of arrows.” Alex thought back to that fight. “But you are right. If I could do it over again. I’d save at least the st arrow for the skill.”

  Fufi nodded. “See, you are getting it! I’m looking forward to you getting more comfortable with your skills. Everyone gets better from learning from their past performance.”

  “To be fair, I figured the first shot would just go a few hundred meters then hit the ground.” Alex grumbled at the broken wood of the whole front half. “It is a shame that it broke. I’m a little worried that the momentum enchantment would break a tight enough wound ballista no matter what. Would have to test it to find out, but even if the whole thing was metal and could take the force, would it just break on an empower shot?”

  “It might.” Fufi walked around the broken wood. “What are you thinking?”

  “Perhaps some kind of modified trebuchet?” Alex spun a loop in the air with her index finger. “We already proved that spinning a flywheel works well with the enchantment. So something without a sudden stop would be ideal.”

  “Meru!” Merumeru added her two cents.

  Alex looked at the slime girl. “I hope that means we should stop rambling and get out of here.”

  Merumeru nodded.

  “Is everyone ready?” Alex surveyed the maids. “We should have enough daylight to make it back to the pipe.”

  The maids curtseyed in unison. It was yet another reminder that old habits die hard.

  “Thank you for visiting magical girl Alex and friends.” One of the Tika’s waved. “Come back soon. Good luck with fighting the demons.”

  “Are you all going to be okay?” Alex hoped that they would take the hint and pcate her. “I might have riled up those ice demons a bit.”

  “We’ll be fine.” Ekta sounded full of faith. “Even though Catalina is being quiet, nothing is preventing her from executing divine retribution. This is just another test of our faith.”

  Alex felt a bit surprised by that answer. But given how the world worked, attacking pces of worship was just asking for divine retribution. She didn’t want to pretend to know the ways of deities, but considering that the goddess of purity may know about this attempt to defile her holy site and was just keeping quiet about it because she was sick of Terre didn’t bode well for the safety of this pce. From what she’d studied and heard from others, deities going all out tended to be cataclysmic. If there was some kind of doomsday artifact here then she’d like to be long gone if it got activated. Afterall, the temple had a bunch of catacombs under it that held the ritual site for summoning a hero from another world. Who knows what else might be lurking in those abandoned tunnels.

  “If that is everything.” Alex looked longingly to the gate. “We are going head out. The maids should be able to find us if something goes really wrong.”

  “We have been holding the candle against the darkness for many years and will continue to do so faithfully.” Tika spoke with conviction.

  After a final check, Alex, and friends exited the gate, waved goodbye and headed into the frigid ndscape. A peculiar band journeyed across the frozen expanse. With a pink fmingo scouting ahead, they navigated past snow drifts and crevices hidden beneath them. The crunch of ice beneath the carriage along with the clockwork ticking of the gearing mechanisms was their anthem. The temple slowly vanished behind them, repced by peaks covered with ice off in the distance.

  After a couple hours of venturing into the unforgiving cold, Merumeru stuck her face to the cloudy window, like she was looking for something and began quivering with excitement.

  “Meru meeeee!” Merumeru gestured wildly.

  “What is it?” Alex stopped the carriage, got bundled up and let Merumeru outside.

  The slime girl bounced happily to a ridge where there was rock showing from a crack in the gcier. She pointed and hopped up and down.

  “It looks like rocks.” Alex deadpanned.

  “What a fancy looking vein.” Fufi flew down and took a closer look. “Do you like these rocks? Should we take some with us?”

  Alex, all bundled up, approached the rock wall and noticed a silvery white serpentine vein in dark rock. She wasn’t a geologist by any means but perhaps this was a valuable ore?

  After informing the maids that they were going to take a break for an hour or so to collect rocks, Alex got some strange looks. But the maids were quite practiced as keeping up appearance and no one questioned the wisdom of staying any longer in this punishingly cold biome longer than needed. They just put some tea on and tidied up a bit.

  The camper trailer looked a bit empty with all the maids missing that decided to stay at the temple but oh well.

  Using the old grotto excavation technique, It didn’t take long to unearth a few tons of the lustrous silver speckled bck rocks. Some of the maids got bundled up as well and helped put the ore in whatever spots they could find for them. The strenuous exercise helped warm them up a bit. Though the majority of them preferred sipping tea to going outside in the subzero temperatures.

  After securing the mineral bounty, they continued the trek to the portal pipe. Luckily, Merumeru had an uncanny sense of direction when it came to locating pipes. The storm that the demons had created earlier as well as the high winds had completely erased the ruts that their journey to the temple had created. While the increasingly loud cracks of the ice when the heavier vehicle traveled over it was concerning, they pressed forward and not long before dark arrived at the pipe that would lead them back to the sky isnd.

  Everyone had to don the appropriate plumber outfits, then rush out in the cold and dive into the portal. When it was just Alex, Fufi and Merumeru left, Alex turned the carriage back into the card, hopped into the pipe, and spshed down into the cold water of the under-construction castle.

  Alex greeted the construction workers after helping everyone get dried off and on their way. When she headed with Merumeru and Fufi back to the cabin a strange sound drew her attention to the shop.

  A group of children, all smudged with dirt, clustered around the makeshift production setup that Alex had made on a whim.

  On the belt the dolls, looking like solemn workers stationed to fill a job turned with their clockwork mechanisms. One held a thimble filled with bronze and another swung a hammer. Children took turns shouting out instructions dramatically acting like supervisors. They kept the charcoal filled and the pipe bits that Merumeru had collected getting fed into the production line, but took their py-jobs extremely seriously.

  Shouts of, “Next pipe ready for casting.” And, “Get those gears cooled.” Followed by giggling filled the area.

  “I got a machine operator skill unlocked!” One boy sounded like he had won the lottery. And the others erupted into ughter.

  “I got that skill too.” Another child acted like they had just formed a new club. “It sounds really strong. I bet it can defeat the bad guys.”

  Alex crouched in the shade of a tree, hiding in the twilight. A smile graced her lips at the children’s antics. After spending so much time in the cold, the inventive chaotic fun warmed her heart.

  One of the dolls suddenly fell over after a ‘twang’ of a spring propping. The doll fell from her position in the assembly line and all the children gasped.

  One of the girls shouted. “Back to work! No food tonight if you can’t make yourself useful!”

  Alex felt a bit sad at this. Were things so bad that even the children had to learn to go without food back in Yvne’s barony?

  Alex, remaining hidden, did a little dance and animated the doll. The gears started spinning on the little contraptions that allowed it to help with the assembly line. It got up on its own and the children all gasped.

  “Did you see that?” A boy gasped. “The doll moved on its own. Which one of you is a magical girl?”

  “Only Alex and Ariel are magical girls.” A girl smugly stated a fact of life. “Do you see any fmingos around here?”

  They looked around, but couldn’t see Alex, Fufi or Merumeru from their hiding spot.

  Content to let them continue pying with the dolls, Alex rose from her spot and found the usual ft spot to pce the carriage with a trailer attached. They could unload the mysterious ore that Merumeru had been so insistent on gathering in the morning. Now would be a good time to rex and unwind. Hopefully, Yvne’s family wouldn’t take the news that a bunch of her maids decided not to come back after getting their curse removed. She might already know, because the maids could have already gone back to her.