Noru and Kimchan covered their eyes with their palms and groaned loudly. After a few moments, their interest overcame their fear, and the dog girls carefully parted their fingers, lest they accidentally see something truly terrifying.
"I thought so," Itinit sighed.
Halankuo stuck her finger in her mouth. Only Sitihi showed no reaction to what was happening on the screen. The doll was looking at the screen and didn't even move her head.
The terrifying scene, which left no living creature indifferent, ended with the dolls landing at the bottom of a pit half the height of a human.
"She dropped the axe," Itinit noted. "Is it somehow connected to her skills?"
Halankuo tried to say something, but forgot that her finger was in her mouth, so she answered like a cow.
"Dolls have that," Sitihi explained. "Some part of their body or weapon can be linked to abilities."
"Everything they have is connected," Itinit looked at the ceiling and imagined the very same doll with chains on it. "The dolls are perfect creatures."
"Yes," Sitihi confirmed. "The dolls have multicolored hair."
Meanwhile, the healing doll seemed to have tired of fighting. A hand with an eye emerged from the ground and, with a single leap, attached itself to the body. Then it looked around and finally spotted the robot shopper with glowing yellow eyes (it had been broadcasting live this whole time).
"Kimchan," Itinit said.
The youngest of the dog girls understood everything from one word. She jumped up to the screen and put her paw to it.
A white screen with a blue frame and black symbols appeared in front of the robot.
The doll approached the screen. She was probably reading the text, but it was impossible to tell due to her motionless eyes.
"Why did you come here? Who sent you? What is your name?" Itinit wrote, after which the symbols appeared on the robot's screen.
"'What is your name' should have been written first," Halankuo said, pulling a strand of hair on the side.
"I wanted to write," Itinit answered. "But this doll is not mine."
The masked doll read the message and decided to reply. A screen similar to the robot's appeared before her, but with different symbols. Luckily for Kimchan, they were more legible.
"I'm looking for a human-like creature. No one sent me, I have no creator. I only have a sister, but she went north, to an abandoned station near the Snowy Ridge," the dog girl read.
"That's what I need," Itinit suddenly rose from his seat. "Most likely, it has something to do with my big brother."
"My name is Toloruchan, and my sister... has a name too, but you don't need that," Kimchan read.
"Show me an image of the being you're looking for," Itinit wrote. "Maybe I know where it is."
The text on the doll's screen was replaced by an image of a brown-haired man's head, very similar to Itinit.
"He went where your sister went," the creator of the dog girls wrote.
The screen in front of Toloruchan immediately disappeared. The doll "went" underground before Itinit had time to continue his "conversation".
"She's gone," Itinit looked at the screen.
"You wrote something and she left," Halankuo noted, and continued silently:
"You're a doll tamer."
But Itinit wasn't happy about this. He read the message on the screen in front of him and discovered with horror that he'd written something completely different from what he'd intended. But it was too late.
"She won't come here now?" Halankuo asked. "She left too quickly."
"Yes," Sitihi agreed. "She went to where her sister is. She can't lose to her."
"How do you know?" Halankuo turned to her "little sister."
"I have a sis too," Sitihi tilted her head to the side and looked at her "big sister."
The doll's eyes moved. It seemed like tears would flow, but they didn't. Sitihi tilted her head to the other shoulder, and her eyes "returned to normal."
"That can't be," Halankuo blinked several times. "It seemed to me."
"What is it, sis?" Sitihi asked. "Did you see someone?"
"No," Halankuo turned away.
***
A boat with a lizard's head on its bow, surrounded by a blue energy aura, floated against the current and gradually approached the snow-capped mountains on the horizon. The rocky banks turned into cliffs, and the river entered the canyon unnoticed.
Timnichan stood in the front seat in front of the virtual control panel, but not to look at the buttons. The lizard girl just stared into the distance and smiled, as if she had lost part of her brain.
Unana and Yueret, on the other hand, pressed themselves against the sides of the boat and looked at the grey scaly tail, which did not have enough room in front, and so it settled between the "bear cubs".
"Hey, lizard, are we there soon?" Unana glanced at the ice floe floating nearby.
"Yup," Timnichan answered. "The end is coming soon."
"I hope it comes sooner for you," Unana thought out loud.
Timnichan didn't hear the archer's words, or perhaps she simply didn't understand them. Unana could only stare at the ice floes floating down the river and hope the cold lizards hadn't yet woken up and stolen her headphones.
Soon the boat reached its first serious obstacle, a large rock in the middle of the river, and stopped.
"Oh, I'm stuck," Timnichan turned to the "bear cubs," but continued to smile stupidly.
"What did your creator say?" Yueret asked. "Will you swim without a boat or on your tongue?"
"I can't swim," Unana grabbed her brother's hand, despite the closeness of the lizard's tail.
"You don't need to swim," Timnichan said. "You will fly."
The lizard girl pressed one of the buttons, causing the aura around the boat to turn purple.
"Why didn't we fly right away?" Yueret asked.
"The first creator said that flying is only possible when swimming is impossible," Timnichan said. "Purple energy is used up faster than blue. It contains air. So we'll fly for a little while. And then we won't fly."
"Will we arrive?" Unana asked.
"I don't know," the lizard girl answered.
"Uh..." Unana looked at the nearest cliff with its dark green coniferous trees above. "Yueret, maybe I can fly to the shore?"
"Bear cubs aren't allowed to wander unsupervised," Timnichan said.
"You're my character," Yueret frowned.
"And my," Unana repeated.
"Okay then," the smile disappeared from the lizard girl's face, making her immediately "smarter."
Soon, all three stood among the trunks of coniferous trees on a high terrace of the canyon. From here, a view opened up of a dark green landscape, dotted with the white peaks of the mountain range.
"Are the mountains closer, or is it just me?" Unana asked.
"No, they've just gotten bigger," Yueret joked.
"I'm not stupid," Unana sat down on the moss and leaned her back against the tree trunk.
"I'm serious. It's cold out there. You need to get dressed."
At that moment, Unana realized she could feel the cool bark of the tree and tried to find another spot, but could only tilt her head.
"What's wrong?" Yueret asked. "Are you stuck?"
"Uh..." Unana lunged forward, but couldn't free herself from the tree's resinous embrace. "Yeah…"
"Let me help," Timnichan approached Unana.
The archer looked at the spirit of cold lizard and discovered that she wasn't smiling.
"Something's wrong here..." Unana turned away and closed her eyes. "Oh, okay."
Yueret held out his hand, trying to stop the character from doing something stupid at the right moment. But Timnichan simply released white-blue gout from her mouth, which froze the tree in a matter of moments.
"That's it," the lizard girl smiled.
"What do you mean, 'that's it'?" Unana grimaced. "I'm cold."
"You can break this thing," the lizard girl pointed at the ice statue of a coniferous tree.
"It could fall," Yueret took a step back.
"And crush my headphones," Unana instantly forgot about the cold.
"It'll crush me too," Yueret noticed a lump of ice half the size of his head above him.
Unana felt the cold again, but this time all over her body. She forgot about her headphones and began thinking about how to warm up.
The archer's brain automatically summoned a red arrow with a flaming tip, but it was of no use. The fire was almost immediately extinguished by the cold spreading from the ice sculpture.
Yueret looked at his younger sister, who was shivering from the cold, but he didn't know how to help her. Every option his mind could generate either killed Unana or both "bear cubs."
Meanwhile, the arrow fell from the archer's hand and landed on a layer of moss and needles. Her cold fingers could no longer hold it, nor even summon anything at all.
"If she freezes, her hair will turn white," Timnichan said. "But I need to deliver you brown."
Unana bowed her head and stopped shivering from the cold. It seemed she was falling asleep and would soon turn into an ice sculpture herself.
"Are you cold, my little bear? Your paws are completely frozen. They'll fall off soon."
The voice seemed familiar to Unana, but she couldn't remember where she'd heard it.
"I'll warm you up. Your paws will be warm again, and you'll wander the forest and pick berries."
A brown plush bear with glowing red eyes appeared in Unana's palms, folded on her hips. The next moment, it burst into flames, not real, but as if painted on.
Unana's body flared briefly, after which she opened her eyes and fell chest-first onto the moss.
"What was that?" Yueret looked at the Timnichan.
The spirit of cold lizard only smiled stupidly, but after a few moments she decided to answer:
"It's an inner fire."
"What inner fire?"
"Well, he's inside. I don't know anymore."
Yueret helped his sister up, after which the three of them moved away from the tree to a safe distance.
"This tree is cute," Unana summoned the camera and placed her finger on the large, black, round button to take a photo.
"It could have crushed you," Yueret reminded to his sister.
Unana's finger hovered over the button for a moment before she swiped the screen downwards.
"I can freeze another tree," Timnichan suggested. "Choose any one."
Unana looked back, but did not see that same tree. All around there were only thick trunks that rose high into the sky and only there "released" branches with cones barely visible from the ground.
"It's there," Unana slid her finger from the bottom up, which brought back the screen with a large round button. "Its branches are so close to the ground and the cones are so big. They're icy!"
Yueret looked at the frozen tree. The translucent white-blue ice almost completely obscured the brown trunk, and the cones hanging from the thin but resilient branches looked like icicles covered in several layers of snow.
"Yeah, sis," Yueret said. "This tree needs to be taken down before it melts."
Unana's finger rested on the button, causing it to turn red for a moment. A thumbnail of the photo appeared in the lower corner of the screen.
"What did you call me? Repeat," Unana said, holding her finger to the thumbnail to examine the photo.
"Did I say something?" Yueret asked, surprised.
"I misheard," Unana thought and sighed, and then touched the photo. "Since that incident with the plush bear, I've been imagining a lot of things."
***
Tuot woke up to a soft blow to his head and immediately opened his eyes. The weapon turned out to be a black furry tail, which was growing and shrinking.
"Horns... where are they?" these were Tuot's first words after waking up.
The dinosaur's gaze dropped lower. A black furred tail was complemented by gray-purple shorts, worn over thick thighs that, it seemed, could crush his small head.
"I've seen these somewhere," Tuot began to think, but then the thought trailed off.
The dinosaur's gaze shifted to the side. Tuot saw an image of a girl with yellow fox ears on her head, dressed in a towel made of metal plates, holding a spoon shaped like a weapon.
"This is... my room."
Tuot rose abruptly to his feet, miraculously even managing to maintain his balance. Then he began to look around the room and saw a familiar arctic fox girl curled up in a ball on his large bed. Her eyes were closed, and her chest, covered by a gray-purple fur top with sleeves, rose and fell alternately.
A black animal tail peeked out from behind a hole in shorts the same color as the top, and the thighs, which, due to their size, had seemed dangerous to the dinosaur, now only made him want to eat them.
Tuot didn't hesitate for long and went to the kitchen to enjoy some food from the refrigerator...
...but something went wrong. As soon as the dinosaur opened the door to his storage room, he saw a girl with metal horns on her head, sitting in a fetal position. Her gray hair was covered in chunks of ice, and her dress of metal plates didn't hide her thick thighs, which could truly crush someone.
"This isn't the kind of meat that should be in here," Tuot said, closing the door.
Only a few moments later did the dinosaur realize there was some creature inside, and with a sharp movement, he opened the refrigerator...
... The horned girl in the metal dress looked at Tuot with gray eyes and large black round pupils like a bird's.
"You're keeping me awake. Get out of here before I cut you."
"But you don't need to sleep," Tuot took a step back. "You're a character."
"Yup, I'm Kyotyoryon, the spirit of metal. That's why I'm sitting in a metal bed and sleeping."
"You're just lying there with your eyes closed."
"That's because I'm sleeping. People sleep with their eyes closed. I saw it myself. If I opened them, I wouldn't be sleeping, but with my eyes closed, I sleep."
"Actually, sleeping is a bit different," thought Tuot. "But how can I explain that to a creature that can't sleep? It's a good thing she was found at all. I won't have to tell Halankuo that Kyotyoryon leaked out through the pipe."
"Close the door and don't open it again," the spirit of metal said. The tip of its tongue shaped like a blade protruding from its mouth, which she soon shoved back in with her hand.
"Okay," Tuot looked at the character and saw her seemingly "edible" legs. "But first, give me some food."
Kyotyoryon grabbed the bag of meat lying near her ankle bracelet and tossed it to the dinosaur.
Tuot felt a sharp pain in his stomach, but didn't immediately understand what was causing it.
"Go away, I gave you your food," the tip of her tongue peeked out of Kyotyoryon's mouth again.
But the dinosaur didn't understand the metal spirit's words. He lay on the wooden floor, writhing in pain, completely oblivious to the source, a package containing a chunk of meat the size of a human head.
Only when something sharp and metallic appeared before Tuot's eyes did the pain stop, but was replaced by fear, the most powerful feeling, capable of creating stupidities and miracles...
"What's wrong, Tuot? Did you see the pillow eating my tail?"
The dinosaur couldn't answer. The sleepy Arctic fox girl sat on the bed in front of him and yawned.
Luckily, the image on the wall helped Tuot again. This time, it was a girl with cow horns, hiding behind a large gray shield.
"You're like a doll," Etinnei noted. "Did you see something?"
"Yeah..." Tuot stared at the wall, motionless. "I remembered. I saw something in a dream."
"What?"
The dinosaur gradually emerged from this strange state and looked at his friend, who was almost completely awake and even picked up a slightly bitten pillow.
"A pillow is for sleeping," Tuot said.
Etinnei was about to bite, but her friend's words stopped her. The arctic fox girl took the pillow into her mouth a few moments later.
"I dreamed of a sheep girl," Tuot said.
Etinnei released the pillow from her mouth.
"She was riding a stone barrel."
"What did you say?" Etinnei looked at her friend with a look worthy of a doll.
"I was walking through an abandoned village and saw a girl with sheep's horns. She was sitting on a stone barrel. She asked if I knew her name, and I said I did. Her name is..."
"Imerii..."
"Yup, that's the character from the game."