“Son of a bitch!” Serra explodes from her seat, blades flashing out, slicing the damaged buggy in two.

The Knights and King tumble into the mud and roll to their feet, blades in hand to rush the group. Roxie whistles an off-kilter tune, peppering one of them with sonic blows.

Staggering to their knees, Autumn gets a hand on the hood and drives their rapier into the ground, fiery cracks splintering like a web through the mud and erupting as geysers of flames that incinerate another three.

Serra clashes with the King in a furious battle of blades, while the last Knight circles around, rushing her back. Serra deflects a blow from the King and sends it wide, cutting the Knight down with a slash of pure force. The King abandons his blade and grabs her wrists, smashing his helmet into her forehead. Unable to utilize swords at this range, Serra drops her own blades, claws flashing.

The King grabs Serra’s horn, smashing his gauntlet repeatedly into her face, and she grabs at his helmet, getting her claws into the vents.

“Oh yeah, she’s got him. What were you saying?” Roxie asks Autumn, as the brawl continued beside them.

“I’m not sure this is where it ends,” Autumn shakes their head, looking up. The Threads of Fate were returning to normal, swirling endlessly above, “who else was practicing chronomancy today?” their eyes turn to the limp, lifeless body of the Primordial Reckoning, “how did the Knights know where to awaken Terminus, or how?” their eyes turn to the two halves of the buggy’s engine block, “and who upgraded their vehicles to keep up with an adventure grade sports car?”

“Four months of investigation and we’re still not done,” Roxie sighs, “how many people could want the world to end?”

Roxie jumps a little as the King is thrown into the car, grabbed again and thrown against the ground. Serra seizes her katana and sinks one into the King’s neck, finally putting the zealot down.

“Lotta folks got a problem with our world,” Serra points out, “question is, who’s got the resources?”

Autumn’s eyes scan the environment, but find no Knights left alive they could question, not after the chaos of the last battle, “Serra, could you retrieve the halves of the engine? The construction could yield some answers.”

“Right, course.”

The trio gathers themselves slowly, stowing the halves of the engine in Roxie’s trunk, clambering into the car with heavy limbs and sore bodies. Roxie, unable to play her guitar at the moment, hums a quiet tune that fills the space and soothes their wounds.

A gentle breeze blows through, swirling and twisting with Roxie’s magic. Their wounds begin to heal themselves, a blessing from the forest itself, as thanks. Roxie flexes her fingers and smiles, shifting to the driver’s seat and taking the wheel.

Autumn quietly collapses across the back seat, still recovering from the effects of a chronomantic feat, and unconsciousness soon overtakes them.

Roxie turns the car around and heads back the way they had come, down the now muddy path amongst the trees.

“What’s the plan once we get home?” she wonders, “Autumn can pick that engine apart for clues, but I’m fresh outta leads.”

“Gonna see my girlfriend,” Serra huffs, settling uncomfortably into her seat.

“It’s been four days, don’t act like the world is gonna end.”

“Won’t anymore,” Serra smiles a little, “I’ll reach out to Ama n’ Frosch, see if they turned anything up.”

“Smart. I’m gonna submit the forms for our payment; Terminus, the King and the Knights should make us all plenty of cash,” Roxie smiles, but it sank quickly, “ugh, but that’s so much work… forget that, you got plans with Seren?”

A devilish smile creeps across Serra’s face, “Well…”

“Ew, nevermind, I don’t wanna hear about that,” Roxie waves her hand as though wafting away a foul smell, “I’m probably just gonna sleep when I get home, I can edit today’s footage later.”

“M’sure we’ll get some sleep eventually.”

“Gross, Serra!” Roxie throws an old cup at the laughing demon, the fairy can’t help but laugh a little herself.

Light begins to surround the car, and Roxie presses a button on the console, summoning a hardtop roof that guards the weary adventurers from the elements. The car pulls out of the trees and emerges into a gorgeous city, a fairy metropolis of marble spires combining flawlessly with the nature around it. The forest behind them was now a small grove of golden foliage, one of many portals to the endless wilderness they left behind.

Roxie merges with traffic and slowly brings the group out of the city, reaching a road that stretches out into a meadow of beautiful flowers, then to a rolling green plain, leaving the city of Nixielogue behind.

Many hours pass, and the sun now hangs low in the sky when they come to a bridge, at least a hundred meters long, stretched across a huge ravine with flowing ocean waters at its bottom.

The continents of Exicara consist of impossibly huge, shattered plates, separated by gaps such as these, mountainous drops into the unfathomable waters of the ocean. Roxie turns the heat up as they cross, the temperature outside dropping. This plate could not have been more different from the one before, a polar biome, a rolling tundra into a forest coated by snow.

The majority of their journey takes them across this plate. As the sun at last sets, Autumn awakes slowly, trading places with Roxie for a while. Though they stop occasionally for food or gas, their minds are worn down by exhaustion and a longing for home. Early in the evening of their second day of travel, they finally cross another bridge into a significantly more moderate environment, passing through a cliff-filled forest, up and down the side of a mountain, and at last arrive at New Diagory.

New Diagory is a city at least twice the size of Nixielogue, though just as tuned to nature. Buildings and streets are built around huge, natural spikes of earth, with plenty of room for nature to thrive. From this side, the trio first drive through a nice suburban area, then into the city itself. Buildings are built with trees growing in and around, solid bridges on many levels stretching between them, creating a busy environment that blends the needs of people and nature.

They reach Autumn’s home first, a quiet apartment in a section of city that stretches underground into a massive cavern, where the buildings are built stout and wide. The trees become moss and mushrooms, glowing gently in cycles that mimic the daylight above; by this hour the city is dim. Autumn’s home sits at the far West end, overlooking the smaller buildings adventurers and researchers use, just before the city gives way to the cavern altogether.

Autumn’s third-floor apartment is nice, fairly spacious, the front door opens directly into a living space with an attached kitchen, three doors beyond served as bedrooms and a single bathroom. Resting on the couch is a young woman with short brown hair and pale white skin, wearing a red shirt and black pants with an apron overtop, a steel mace on the cushion beside her. She looks, impossibly, more tired than the arriving adventurers.

“Joy.”

“Hey, Auts,” she yawns loudly. She was staring at the TV, though it is currently turned off, “s’that Serra?”

“Heyo,” Serra leans to avoid a hanging lamp, moving into the apartment.

“No Rox?”

“In the car,”

“Damn,”

“Serra, would you place that on my workbench?” Autumn asks, resting on the back of the couch.

Serra takes the engine through the fourth door, into Autumn’s room. A simple space in shades of white, primarily dominated by their workbenches, one to either side, and a neatly made bed stuffed into the corner. Myriad projects, in various stages of completion, spill from the workspaces, and a wall of written scraps, notes, articles, photos and countless other pieces are pinned above them both, the trail of their ongoing investigation. The far wall leads onto a balcony, overlooking the strange wilderness of the cave beyond.

Serra drops the engine pieces onto the cleanest available surface and turns back, waving Autumn a quick farewell on her way out the door.

“Not gonna forgive if y’stay up workin’,” she warns.

“You have my promise,” Autumn assures her. They watch as she exits, shutting the door behind her.

“...y’gonna work?”

“Naturally.”

-

The trip to Serra’s home is quick and uneventful, just a short drive back through the city. She lives roughly in the middle of the city, where the buildings are often taller rather than wider. The elevator ride takes her to the seventh floor in exhausted silence, down a corridor and to apartment number seventy-two, a nice oak door with a hanging wreath of green and white flowers. She’s barely gotten her own key out when the handle turns, and a tiny woman in a white silk nightgown flies out of the doorway to embrace her.

Seren is a minor nature spirit, maybe five feet tall and plump with tan, freckled skin and waist-length, dark green curls. Sapphire blue eyes scan Serra up and down, taking in all the injuries. The cuts, the bruises, the black eye and scuffed horn, the bandages only half-decently wrapped and wounds healed just enough to make it home.

“You look beautiful,” Seren tells her, pulling on Serra’s arm, “don’t die on our welcome mat?”

“Got all the energy I need, now,” Serra smiles, letting herself be dragged inside.

-

Roxie gets herself home last, barely awake enough to not crash. Her house is not an apartment, but a proper standing home in the suburban space at the edge of the city, with an attached garage she pulled her car into.

The house is nicely decorated and decently clean, Roxie makes an effort to keep her spaces proper, but now the weariness of their adventure has fully overtaken her. She’s barely through the door before she pulls the long unwashed pieces of clothing off, tossing them haphazardly across whatever furniture is available, jacket across the table, shirt on the couch and skirt on the floor by the stairs. She tosses her bra on the railing as she ascends and throws open the door to her bedroom, placing her guitar gently on its stand.

The bedroom is a little messier than the house at large, a huge plush bed with black sheets and a thick, weighted pink blanket taking pride of place, beckoning invitingly. A pair of bookshelves take up one corner, to either side of a dark red armchair, which she haphazardly throws her bag and underwear over.

Though the bed calls to her like a siren’s song, Roxie takes a moment to examine herself in the mirror. She has far fewer injuries than Serra or Autumn, being purely a magic user, and a much smaller target at that. A small smile finds its way to her as she looks her lean frame up and down, six years in a body that at last feels like her and she still gets a little happier every time she sees it, tiny holographic wings fluttering excitedly on her back.

Finally, Roxie tears her eyes away and collapses gratefully into bed, allowing sleep to overtake her.