The girls shared some anecdotes about their siblings while crossing the desert on their way to the trade hub Doma had told them about. Everyone learned a little more about Nathan, Anna's older brother; Nina, Ari's older sister; and Luca, Maya's older brother, and how they haven't seen them in years.

  “Woah!” To escape the blizzard Blu had created, Steph, Chloe, and the bird in question relocated to the top of a massive pillar of ice that had conveniently appeared below their feet before growing taller. Being above the blizzard now, the dog-girl was amazed by the sights.

  “I couldn’t have said it better myself!” Chloe shared her feelings as she looked at the spectacle below them. It was a white flurry of ice and snow whirling all around them, covering the entire area as far as they could see. It was so dense and violent that the girls were unable to tell how high up they really were. Even the pure-white sky above them had turned cloudy, and more snow eventually began to fall from above, indicating that it was still growing in size. “It’s probably for the best that Sophia isn’t anywhere near, huh?”

  “Yeah, she would have at least three different emotional meltdowns just from looking at this.” Steph gestured all around them.

  “True.” She let out a small chuckle. “Then again, we're the ones that flee from the outside desert adventure because it's too hot for our liking." The fox then scratched her cheek.

  “This and that are unrelated!”

  “Is that so?” Chloe raised an eyebrow.

  “Yup!”

  “I see.”

  “Anyway, what should we do about the ocean?” Steph changed the topic. “It would be a waste to get rid of everything Blu’s blizzard already created to replace it with water, wouldn’t it?”

  “I think so, too.” The fox felt the same. “What would be the alternative, though?”

  “That’s a good question.” She paused for a moment. “Oh, how about we make this area the land portion of the biome? Once the blizzard has done its thing, we can add some mountains and other stuff to make it look cool.”

  “B-But my ocean!” Chloe wasn’t a fan of the suggestion.

  “I wasn’t done yet.” She smiled at her. “We’ll go to the edge of the blizzard area and start the water part from there. That way, the ocean has all the space it needs to grow while we already have some solid land to play with. Once there’s a decently formed coast, we’d immediately have a good starting habitat for penguins, too!”

  “You really like them, don’t you?”

  “I love them!” Steph was very enthusiastic about her penguins.

  “Ehehe.” The fox enjoyed the extra cute side of her girlfriend. “Well, the plan of starting the ocean next to the frozen land doesn’t sound half bad.” She was warming up to the idea.

  “Great!” She lightly clapped her hands. “There is, however, a slight issue there, though.”

  “Yes?”

  “I have no idea how to get there.” The dog-girl shrugged. “The blizzard is massive, and I don’t even want to know how long it would take us to reach the edge of it. Without a point of reference, we’re certain to get lost, too. In fact, I’d bet money that it probably grows faster than we can navigate through it, so we’d never get out of it.” After saying that, Blu just nodded a couple of times. “See?” Steph was glad it got confirmed.

  “That certainly is an issue.” Chloe scratched her cheek.

  Hearing that, Blu jumped on the icy ground before the two and turned to face them. A moment later, one of the usual two-meter-high and wide pink and purple portals appeared behind the bird. Then, the parakeet lifted its right wing and pointed at it.

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  “E-Eh…?” The couple hadn't seen that coming. “You can do that?!” Seeing how surprised they looked, Blu proudly puffed up its chest.

  “Wait, did Sophia teach you how to do that?” The fox stared at the parakeet.

  “I thought sis and Mira are the only ones being able to use them because of overseer shenanigans!?” Steph also got loud before she started pouting. “I want my own portals, too!”

  “It’s probably still a power issue? Like, Mira, being the overseer of magic, has basically unlimited magic, and Sophia uses the same type of power as Canir, who is the overseer. Blu’s arguably more powerful than all of us combined, so that might be the explanation.”

  “Grr!” The dog started growling. “We need a way to increase our own magic!”

  “I wouldn’t say no to having more power myself.” Chloe nodded a few times. “I don’t think it’s all that easy, though.”

  “Well, Sophia’s power almost tripled since we started going all out in her domain, so there has to be an easy way!”

  “She’s also constantly pouring all of her internal authority into this place, which is likely accelerating her growth like crazy.”

  “We’re doing the same, though!” Steph didn’t think that was the explanation.

  “Wait, that’s true!” The fox-girl hadn’t thought that far yet. "Could it be that only she's growing because it's her domain, and they're somehow linked to each other rather than just her tirelessly using her magic day in and out?”

  “Like, on top of her own efforts, all of us are also helping her grow?” She gave it some more thought. “I love being there for Sophia, and her domain is a lot of fun, so I don’t regret anything, but I also want more magic to play with!” The dog-girl got even more envious.

  “I’ve been happy even with the amount I had before you shared half with me, but I also don’t want to be left behind by Sophia, or even more so, you. If you want to grow, I want to do so, too!” Chloe was slightly more relaxed about it. “Then again, have we really not grown?”

  “What do you mean?” Steph looked confused.

  “Sophia hadn’t noticed herself that her authority exploded until we told her so. What if something similar happened to us, and we got stronger without even realizing it, either? Our authority regenerates so fast, and regular magic costs so little that a change probably won’t be noticeable at all.”

  “It doesn't seem like you feel any different, though." The dog-girl stared at Chloe for a moment while seemingly concentrating quite hard. “Yeah, it’s the exact same amount of authority I can feel in myself.”

  "That says nothing, though, because we've been doing the same for weeks. Continuously pouring magic into this place here, that is.” The fox shrugged. “That would imply that we should’ve grown in power by the same amount, meaning we’re still the same.”

  “Ah.”

  “Blu, has our authority over magic grown since we’ve met you?” Feeling like they were getting nowhere, Chloe turned to the parakeet for help. In return, the bird tilted its head while alternatingly looking at the girls for a couple of seconds. Afterward, it energetically nodded to confirm her question.

  “Seriously?!” Steph couldn’t believe it. “How much?!” She got very excited and stared at the bird, who only tilted its head in return once more.

  “It’s not as crazy as Sophia’s growth, is it?” Naturally, the fox also got quite curious, but Blu then shook its head.

  “Too bad!” The dog-girl didn't like that. “How much is it, then? Twice?” Hearing that number, Blu’s headshake changed into something between a shake and a nod. “A bit less than twice?” Steph tried to further narrow it down, and the parakeet’s movement turned into an energetic nodding.

  “Seriously?!” Chloe had the same reaction as the dog-girl before. “I didn’t notice at all?!”

  “Same!” Steph nodded along. “Fey and Mira also were barely around, so there weren’t many people attentive enough to realize. Maybe the wolves, but I guess they were also doing their own things.”

  “Or didn’t care.”

  “Or that!” The dog-girl could easily see this being the case. “Especially Fen!”

  “Maybe they also grew? That would be another possible explanation.” She didn’t want to be too mean to them, after all. “Sophia was the one who started pumping all her magic into the domain, so we immediately noticed something about her authority, but once all of us started doing the same, it became a lot less noticeable.” Listening to her, Blu then nodded again.

  “We probably grew a bit more than the others because our recovery is faster, right?” Steph looked at the parakeet, which was still moving its head up and down. "Let's go!" Her competitive side liked that quite a bit.

  “I can’t wait to tell the others!” Chloe happily clapped her hands while smiling. “I bet everyone will be happy to hear their magic grew and now have more to play with!”

  “Sophia will probably be the happiest because that means everyone can pump even more into her domain.” Knowing the selfish side of her sister, Steph’s expression formed into a slight smirk.

  “Well, it’s an absolute win-win for everyone, so I doubt anyone, me included, would care about that.” The fox-girl shrugged. “In fact, without her domain, we wouldn’t be able to grow this fast in the first place, right?” She smiled at Blu, who was probably going to get a sore neck from all the nodding it was doing.

  “That is very true!" Steph agreed with her. "Alright, before we see them again and tell them the good news, let's work on our project a bit more!” She energetically raised her arm high in the air.

  “Okay!” The fox-girl did the same.

  Having learned many new things about everyone's authority on magic, the couple eventually got back on track with their polar biome and finally stepped through the portal Blu had provided them with quite a while ago.