The ice flower on Lenora's cheek continued catching the light.
No one lowered anything.
Mimi's bow stayed raised. Lenora's swords stayed drawn. Lewd stood between them with her hands open, looking from Crysha to Lenora and then toward Mimi, trying to keep the room from becoming something it could not return from.
Nobody attacked.
But nobody stepped away either.
Derrpy reached up and struck the magical bell hanging from her neck.
The chime was small.
The magic inside it was not.
Its sound passed through the Emporium, through the shelves and the tables and the weapons still waiting in everyone's hands. The pressure in the room loosened just enough for everyone to breathe again.
"Okay, okay," Derrpy said, looking around at them. "It's time for everyone to settle down."
Her gaze stopped on Mimi.
"I'm sorry, but I feel like allowing the other rabbit girl inside was a mistake. Things were already tense before she arrived, and now everyone looks ready to destroy my brother's shop."
Slurry glanced around at the raised weapons.
He did not look worried about the shop.
If anything, he looked tired.
"Brother Slurry," Derrpy continued, "I think it's time we make Mimi leave."
Mimi's eyes moved toward Slurry.
Slurry stood without arguing and reached inside his hoodie, pulling out a book Lewd had not seen among the countless others filling the Emporium. Its cover carried no title. No symbol. Nothing that explained what it was meant to do.
He opened it.
Strange magical circles formed beneath Mimi's feet. More appeared around her waist and shoulders, each one turning in a different direction as symbols moved around their edges like words searching for somewhere to land.
"Think of where you want to go," Slurry told her. "The book will teleport you somewhere near that location. This is a one-time use, so choose carefully."
Mimi closed her eyes.
"The White Tiger Kingdom," she said. "The dungeon area where the Wolf-Dragon was being held."
Lenora's grip tightened around her sword.
Slurry's face changed.
Not surprise.
Distrust.
"I do not trust you," he said. "Not you, and not whatever reason you have for wanting to go there."
Mimi opened her eyes again, but Slurry had already made his decision.
"I will send you close enough to reach the dungeon," he continued. "But far enough away that it will take you five days to get there."
Slurry closed the book.
The magical circles folded inward.
Mimi vanished with them.
The place where she had been became empty again, though the tension she had brought into the room did not disappear with her. It stayed behind like smoke after a fire—thinner now, but still present.
Lenora did not move.
Her blades stayed up. Her hair stayed red. She stood over the split table and looked at the empty floor where Mimi had been standing and waited for something inside her to finish, and it did not finish.
She wore his face.
And then she was gone before I could make her answer for it.
Her arms began to shake. Not from strain. From having nowhere left to put any of it.
She lowered the blades slowly, because lowering them quickly would have meant she was done, and she was not done. The crimson bled out of her hair one shade at a time. Her free hand came up and touched her cheek without thinking, and her fingertips found the ice flower still sitting against her jaw — cold, precise, unmelted.
She left it there.
Derrpy looked toward Crysha.
"You must know something else is going on."
Crysha's eyes narrowed, but before she could answer, the bell around Derrpy's neck began chiming on its own.
Once.
Twice.
Then faster.
A magical map near the center of the Emporium lit up. One point glowed inside the White Tiger Kingdom, pulsing with enough power to make the ink around it tremble.
Derrpy hurried toward it.
"Big Sister Revy has made it to the Wolf-Dragon," she said. Relief entered her voice for only a moment before her eyes moved across the rest of the map. "But something is wrong. There are three other places holding the presence of a Wolf-Dragon God."
Crysha, Lewd, and Lenora tilted their heads.
"Huh?"
The word left all three of them at the same time.
Derrpy transformed.
Her wool expanded as her body stretched upward, shadow and hunger filling the space where the small sheep girl had been. Her full wendigo form towered over the map, the bell still chiming beneath the darkness gathered around her neck.
She placed one claw above the first additional signal.
"Whisperfen," she said. "There is a large amount of magical power surrounding this one."
Lewd covered her mouth.
"How can he be imprisoned in the White Tiger Kingdom and be in Whisperfen at the same time?"
No one answered her.
The second signal would not remain still long enough for Derrpy to properly examine it. It moved across the map at an unnatural speed, disappearing from one area and emerging in another before the magical ink could finish forming its location.
"This one is moving at an abnormal pace," Derrpy said. "Either the imprisoned Derpy escaped, or something carrying his presence is moving exceptionally fast."
The third signal appeared inside the Elven Empire.
Lenora stared at it.
Heat moved across her cheeks before she could stop it. Where it reached the ice flower, a single thin line of water broke loose and slid down to her chin.
"Why would Derpy go back there?" she asked. "That doesn't make any sense."
She tried to find an explanation.
Nothing came.
Derrpy and Slurry exchanged a look. It was quiet and deliberate, the kind shared between two people who had worked beside one another long enough to speak without needing words.
Then they turned toward Lenora and Lewd.
"You may each choose one item from the shop," they said together. "It's on the house."
Lewd blinked. "Anything?"
"A potion," Derrpy said.
"A magical item," Slurry added.
"Or something else you desire," they finished together.
Lewd looked at Lenora.
Lenora looked back at her.
For the first time since Mimi had entered the room, both of them smiled.
They followed Derrpy deeper into the Emporium, moving between shelves filled with objects that glowed, whispered, slept, or watched them pass. Crysha remained behind with Slurry and the map.
The four signals continued glowing.
One in Whisperfen.
One inside the Elven Empire.
One moving too quickly to follow.
And one belonging to the Derpy who had been imprisoned inside the White Tiger Kingdom.
Crysha watched that final light.
It flickered.
Then it disappeared.
Not faded.
Not weakened.
Gone.
A moment later, the same light reappeared over Briar Glen.
Crysha leaned closer.
"There has to be something wrong with this map."
Slurry became still behind her.
"Listen carefully, false prophet."
Crysha looked back.
"False god."
The insult was quiet. It did not need to be louder.
Slurry stood and transformed into his full wendigo form. His shadow spread across the floor, swallowing the legs of the table and climbing the shelves behind Crysha. The air became heavy beneath his presence.
"Although I would enjoy killing you for insulting the god we wendigo sheep worship, there is one thing I must tell you."
Crysha's hand moved toward her sword.
Slurry noticed.
He did not care.
"Our magical items never lie."
Crysha glanced back at the map.
"Then how did Derpy move from the White Tiger Kingdom to Briar Glen?"
"That is not the part you should be worried about."
Slurry stepped closer.
"You believe you have been inside this Emporium for a little longer than a day."
Crysha frowned. "Haven't I?"
"No."
The word settled over her.
"You have been here for one year."
Crysha stared at him.
The frost around her boots stopped spreading.
"A whole year?"
Slurry gave a slow nod.
"Time feels irrelevant to gods. It passes differently around us. Sometimes we do not notice it at all."
His eyes lowered toward her.
"But it still passes."
Crysha's body shuddered as the meaning reached her. She sat in the nearest chair, her earlier anger replaced by something smaller and far less dignified.
Defeat.
"How is that possible?"
Slurry returned his attention to the map.
Crysha lowered her face into one hand.
"Eclipsa is going to kill me."
Something touched Slurry's leg.
Mia stood beside him holding an item. Sphinx waited next to her with another object held carefully between his paws.
Slurry looked down at them.
"You two would like these?"
Mia and Sphinx nodded.
Two gold coins emerged from their shadows and flew neatly into Slurry's open hand. Neither pet explained where the coins had come from. Slurry did not ask. Whatever they had chosen disappeared into their shadows before Crysha could see it.
Lewd and Lenora returned shortly afterward.
Lewd carried a small pendant. It looked ordinary until she moved it beneath the light, revealing thin magical symbols running along its edge.
"A spyware pendant," Derrpy explained. "It will show you the current location of someone you love, no matter how far away they are."
Lewd closed her hand around it.
No one needed to ask whose location she wanted to find.
Lenora had chosen a ribbon. She wrapped it around her wrist and carefully tied it into place.
"A magical fabric that keeps its wearer's clothing from becoming dirty," Slurry said.
Lenora looked down at what remained of the maid dress she had refused to throw away.
Lewd looked at the ribbon.
Lenora looked at Lewd's pendant.
Neither one laughed at the other's choice.
They were happy with them.
That was enough.
Derrpy and Slurry stepped beside one another. When they spoke again, their voices fell naturally into the same rhyme.
"Our time together has reached its end, But that does not mean we won't meet again. Enjoy your items. Enjoy our wares. May they answer your wishes and soften your cares. Wherever you wander, wherever you roam, Thank you for shopping at our Emporium."
The walls vanished.
The shelves followed.
The tables, books, strange weapons, sleeping objects, and glowing map disappeared as though someone had pulled the entire building out from around them.
The Emporium had not collapsed.
It had simply gone somewhere else.
Lenora, Lewd, Crysha, Mia, and Sphinx were left standing where the enormous shop had been, each of them trying to understand how something so large could disappear without leaving so much as a mark behind.
Lenora moved first.
She turned toward Lewd and held out her hand.
"Are you ready?"
Lewd looked at it before taking it.
"I would like to return to Whisperfen first," she said. "I need to speak with my caretaker. She's probably worried that I haven't contacted her in a while."
Crysha released a slow breath.
"I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you haven't merely been out of contact for a while."
Lewd looked at her.
"It has been a year."
Lenora's hand went rigid around Lewd's.
"A year?"
The word left both women together.
Lewd's ears lowered.
"We lost that much time?"
"How can this be?" Lenora asked.
Neither received an answer.
Mia and Sphinx stepped forward and transformed.
Sphinx's small body expanded into his massive Behemoth form, his wings opening as his stone-dense paws pressed into the ground. Mia became a towering three-headed Cerberus, each head looking in a different direction before all three turned toward Crysha.
Lewd climbed onto Sphinx's back.
Lenora mounted Mia.
Crysha approached them, attempting to recover what remained of her authority.
"Are you ready to return home now, Lenora?"
Lenora settled herself between Mia's shoulders.
"Right after we take Lewd to Whisperfen."
Crysha reached for Mia and attempted to climb onto her back.
Mia did not bite her.
She did not burn her.
She simply kicked her off.
Crysha struck the ground and slid backward while Mia's three heads looked down at her without the slightest hint of regret.
Lewd and Lenora glanced toward one another.
"It seems they still don't like you," they said together.
Mia and Sphinx took off.
The wind hit Lenora's face the moment they cleared the ground, and the ice flower finally gave. It came apart against her cheek and ran down the line of her jaw in a single thin stream, warm by the time it reached her chin — the only thing resembling a tear she had allowed herself since the room where Mimi had worn his face.
She wiped it away with the back of her hand.
Then she leaned forward against Mia's neck and did not look back.
Dust rose behind them, covering Crysha before she could stand. By the time it cleared, the two monsters and their riders were already disappearing into the distance.
Frost formed beneath Crysha's hands.
It spread outward, freezing the dirt, the grass, and the marks Mia had left behind.
Crysha slowly pushed herself upright.
"I am going to make two very nice pouches out of those monsters when I catch them."
The frost cracked beneath her feet.