Sollar didn’t know what to think when she first saw the raft that was going to send her down the log flume. She’s seen a handful of different boats before; most of them smaller boats, and even model boats that her brother would bring her.

Rissle’s barge was the first boat she had ever actually been on. That one had been pretty big.

This raft was rather small. It was essentially a hollowed-out tree log with a seat on the inside, reinforced with some metal ties wound around it.

“It’s like a flute!” Sollar exclaimed, pointing at it.

“A what?” Flaker asked. “What’s like a flute?”

“She’s referring to the boat,” Serclow replied. “And it actually does... somewhat. If you squint your eyes.”

The Snow Spirit shook his head. “I don’t even know what a flute is.”

“It’s a musical instrument,” Serclow grunted. “But that’s beside the point. Help me get the log flume ready.”

Tila, meanwhile, was preparing the chute that the raft was going to be sent down.

“Water levels are good... seems like the valves are working, too,” she stated. “I can’t believe this shoddy piece of equipment still works, somehow.”

“You’re welcome,” Serclow muttered. “Oh, and those valves open like that. You have to open them in a certain order, or you’ll undo all my patch job work.”

“Wait, really?” Tila asked. “Why so complicated?”

“Just the way water works. Put too much pressure in the wrong valve and it splits open... becomes an absolute mess.”

From his hip, Serclow procured a tool which began to glow in its center. The tool looked like some type of wrench, about as long as someone’s forearm.

“What is that?” Sollar asked. She glanced at the unfamiliar piece of equipment.

“This?” Serclow asked. “It’s my Tinnel. Useful multipurpose tool I had custom-made, lets me put things together.”

“Tinnel. Oh, like Shov-ar!” the Demonfolk girl exclaimed.

“Yeah... like your... shovel.”

As Tila and Serclow worked on getting the log flume to work, they could hear some distant shouting. Flaker glanced up, tilting his head to get an angle on the direction of the noise, as the Demonfolk man and the Human woman paid no heed to it.

“Sounds like someone at the front gates,” Flaker said. “Want me to check?”

“Yeah, might as well. Since you’re not being useful at all,” Tila replied.

Flaker rolled his eyes. “I guess I’ll start being useful so you don’t complain.”

The Snow Spirit skipped away to the front gate.

Tila pulled the log raft into the flume using a rope, giving a few grunts as her feet dug into the muddy dirt.

“Alright,” she said, letting go of the rope. “It should be ready. I think you can get in. Unless you want me to lift you in?”

“I can get in!” Sollar exclaimed. With a surprising amount of dexterity, she leaped up and directly into the front seat of the log raft.

Tila glanced at her in surprise.

“...Still surprised at how athletic you Demonfolk are,” she muttered. “Get comfortable in there, Sollar. And make sure you keep your arms and legs in, the ride down is bumpy but it’s safe.”

“Okay, Til-ar!” the Demonfolk girl exclaimed. She gave a thumbs up to the woman.

The Snow Spirit returned not too long after, interrupting the two.

“Hey, Tila? It’s supposedly the Hero and the Healer. They wanna meet you,” he said.

“The Hero and the Healer? On this short of a notice?” the Human woman asked. “We would’ve gotten a message if they were arriving. Hold on, Sollar. something about this makes me suspicious.”

“After you,” the Snow Spirit replied, gesturing her to take the lead.

“I still need to ensure Sollar can get down, give me a second to set up the flume,” the Human woman replied.

“I can do it,” Serclow replied. “I know how to operate the logging flume.”

Tila gave a nod to Serclow. “Alright. You can handle it.”

She then glanced over to the Demonfolk girl they were helping.

“And Sollar?”

“Yeah?” the Demonfolk girl asked, looking at the Human woman with her wide eyes.

“Uh... stay safe down there, alright?”

Tila didn’t know what else to say, so she gave a wave to the Demonfolk girl. Sollar waved back, right as the woman disappeared around the corner to greet the newcomers.

Serclow placed his hands on the lever that would release the raft into the flume. He glanced at the Demonfolk girl, and added his own words.

“Yeah, stay safe,” Serclow said. “New Frontierland’s got plenty of folks down there. Demonfolk, too.”

The Demonfolk girl pouted.

“Everyone keeps saying I should stay safe,” Sollar said. “But I think I know already!”

Serclow gave a short chuckle. “Well, I’m just making sure. You ready to go?” he asked.

“I am!”

Without a second’s hesitation, Serclow pulled the lever, releasing the raft into the flume. The boat splashed into the fast-moving water, as the current picked it up.

Sollar held as the raft slid out of the loading station. She gave a goodbye wave to Serclow before he quickly disappeared from view.

And now, she was headed down the rather steep hill.

The Demonfolk girl could see the lights of New Frontierland in front of her, down at the base of Fort Logger’s hill. The raised canal that made the flume was raised, zigzagging down the hill in a manner so that the incline wasn’t too steep.

The wind was rushing past her face. Sollar couldn’t help but grin at the absolute thrill of going down the world’s largest water slide.

Unbeknownst to the Demonfolk girl, the Hero and the Healer were right behind her. They had just arrived right at the water flume as she had left.

They were in their own raft, too, one that they had commandeered quicker than Serclow could stop the two. However, the raft wasn’t really made to carry the combined weight of the armor-laden Hero and the Healer.

“I see her,” Ronn stated, loud but stern. “Do you, Junil?”

Junil shook her head, as water misted all over her face. “I don’t, not yet!”

The raft that the Hero and Healer were on was slowly moving closer to Sollar’s raft, due to the extra weight added by Ronn and his armor. Eventually, the Healer managed to spot their target.

“There she is!” Junil exclaimed. She pointed to the raft in front of them, almost hidden by the spray of water it was kicking up. “How do we get to her?”

“I have one plan in mind,” Ronn said.

The Hero picked up Junil. It took her precisely five seconds to figure out what Ronn was thinking.

“Don’t tell me that you’re thinking—!”

A situation that required quick thinking also required quick action. So, Ronn flung the Healer directly at the raft Sollar was on, before the Healer could voice her objections.

Junil simply stared, her eyes blank, as she flew from Ronn’s arms to the raft that the Demonfolk girl was on.

And then, she smashed face-first on the back of the raft, where all the water was churning up. So she also got a few good mouthfuls of water, too, as her arms desperately latched onto the back of the raft.

Sollar jumped up as she heard something hit the back of the raft. The Demonfolk girl turned back to see what it was.

“Gah!” Junil exclaimed. She tried to say anything else, but water continued to get splashed onto her face and down her mouth. Her raincoat caught all the mud that was stuck in the crevices of the flume. She gurgled as her fingers gripped hard onto the log-shaped raft, in an attempt to hold on.

Sollar’s perception of Junil’s seemingly life-or-death situation right behind her did not appear that way to the Demonfolk girl. Instead, what she was witnessing was best described as a mud-stained made of straw figure rising out of the water to grab at the side of the boat.

The Demonfolk girl’s lack of experience in the world had her not fear much. Swords, blades, and fire did not deter the girl. She couldn’t really figure out if someone was threatening her or not. However, she still had a healthy instinctual drive, one that immediately told her that the figure crawling onto the boat was most certainly not a good thing.

The bumpy ride wasn’t one to make her Flare. This sight, on the other hand, was.

Sollar gripped her shovel tightly. The sclera of her eyes went red for a moment as her body’s natural fear instincts gripped.

She looked down at the shovel in her hands, as her vision blurred. The blade of the spade glowed as she poured her magic into her trusted tool.

“Ghost! Scary ghost!” Sollar shrieked.

There was one clear line of action to take in this particular situation. The Demonfolk girl proceeded to batter her Shov-ar directly into the face of the ghost. Repeatedly.

The shovel was specifically crafted by the Demon Lord himself to ensure that the sharp magically-enhanced cutting blade couldn’t hurt any living things. This meant that it was about as dangerous as a regular shovel to the Healer.

Which, consequently, meant that it was still as dangerous as a regular shovel to the Healer.

Poor Junil had the spade end of the shovel continuously smacked across her face, left and right. But she held on, the fear of letting go and splashing around outweighing the pain of the farming equipment that was bruising her face.

Unfortunately for her, Sollar would aim a little low with her next spade slash. The Demonfolk girl thrust her shovel forward, the spade of it glowing, before the glow disappeared.

The reason it disappeared was that the spade had sunk into the raft, severing the log boat in half.

Due to the fact that Junil was still clinging desperately, the back half that she held onto began to physically separate from the front half, where Sollar was. Her clothes dragged in the water, as her almost destroyed straw raincoat caught on the rough wood of the log flume..

The rear half of the log raft slid back, as Junil’s dragging on it caused both her and the rear half of the log raft to roll underneath the raft that Ronn was on.

It basically ran her over.

This managed to turn into a chain reaction as the front of Ronn’s raft bowed up, then down right on top of the Healer.

In most other situations, the log flume was designed to keep logs and rafts in. However, the raft was overweight due to Ronn and his armor. That moment of instability, caused by Junil’s involuntary trip right beneath the log raft, was enough for the entire log raft to teeter to the side of the flume.

But they didn’t fall out, not yet. The designers of this flume had the foresight to engineer the flume in such a way as to ensure that an overweight, teetering raft wouldn't fall over. The engineers, however, did not anticipate any raft to be still going so fast directly into a turn.

Sollar’s lighter raft had no trouble with the bend. The raft that Ronn and Junil were on, however, did. So the moment it hit the end, it immediately flipped on itself, tumbling completely out along with both the Hero and the Healer. The two fell a good several meters as Ronn was catapulted up. Junil wasn’t catapulted with the Hero, but was still stuck on the bottom of the log raft.

The raft in question tumbled through the air, before crashing loudly onto the rocks of the hill below.

Meanwhile, Sollar’s eyes faded back to their original colors, as her Flared state gradually undid itself. Her breathing stabilized again, and she sat down in the seat on the half of the boat that still remained.

“Weird scary thing is gone now...” she muttered. Her excitement had been abruptly cut short by the fright, as she held onto the handrails of the raft. A few more bumps jostled her in her seats as the lights of New Frontierland grew closer and closer.

The slope of the log flume gently curved to be shallower and shallower, until the wooden log raft was now basically crawling through the level water.

The log flume entered a building, a lumber mill, near the edges of New Frontierland. Sollar glanced around at the wooden structure, as the raft drifted in, before it bumped against a few other wooden logs that were still in the flume.

She glanced forward, then smiled.

“I’m done!” she exclaimed. The Demonfolk girl then glanced around, to ensure that she had everything accounted for: Her shovel was still mounted on her back, and she still had her knapsack with the Crown in it safely.

Sollar then leaped right out of the log raft, then glanced back at it to see the severed raft shake. It then bubbled up and sunk halfway into the flume.

The Demonfolk girl opted to ignore that, turning her head back slowly and taking some steps away from the raft, until she considered herself sufficiently far enough to not be associated with the mess.

She then began skipping, bounding away through the sawmill.

“That was fun!” Sollar exclaimed. “Except for the ghost part. I should tell Til-ar, Serc-lar, and Flak-ar to get rid of the ghosts for next time!”

The Demonfolk girl immediately glanced around for an exit. She saw that there was a window, up near the top of a ramp of lumber. Sollar scrambled over a few logs to get to the window, before leaping out onto the streets.

By this hour, it had gotten rather dark. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the warm orange glow of the gas-lit streetlamps. She glanced down at the empty, stone brick streets.

“I’m in New Frontier-land!” Sollar exclaimed. She leaped down from the window, landing on her feet. Her tail twirled to balance her from the landing, before she managed to get stable on her two feet. The Demonfolk girl then glanced around.

“Where is everyone?” she asked. “Do I need to find them?”

Sollar headed off into the quiet town as the earlier conversations she had with Tila, Serclow, and Flaker escaped her mind.

Speaking of Tila, Serclow, and Flaker, the three were having their own conversation with each other. Namely, all three sat around the table within Fort Logger’s cabin, staring at the neat pile of money that was now in front of all of them. It was both Sollar’s payment to them, combined with Ronn’s cash that he was using to pay off the money that the Mage owed them.

“I never actually expected to get this money back,” Tila admitted.

“Better than nothing,” Serclow added. He peered over the cash. “Is it enough to cover all of us?”

“Enough, plus plenty more after that,” Tila said. “No, this is twice the amount. Quite a lot...”

The woman thought for a few seconds, before glancing over at the Demonfolk man.

“Hey, Serclow.”

“Yeah?”

“You know I hate your guts, that’ll always remain true,” she said. “But, well, I think this is enough for all of us to retire. You can, perhaps, go to work with the Rissle woman you’ve always talked about.”

Silence, for a few moments.

“That’s... not a bad idea, even coming from you,” Serclow muttered. He placed a finger on his chin while he was at it.

Tila then glanced over to the Snow Spirit. He was also sitting at the table, twiddling his thumbs.

“What are you thinking of doing, Flaker?”

Upon being asked that question, his eyes lit up and he smiled.

“This much money? Well, I’m thinking of opening a shop!” he exclaimed.

“A shop, huh?” Tila asked. “What kind?”

“An ice cream and soda shop!” he exclaimed. His answer was immediate.

Tila had an immediate urge to berate his idea, but bit it back. Despite the Snow Spirit talking about ice cream a fair amount, she’s never actually had it before. Dairy was difficult to ship up to Fort Logger, after all.

“...Well, you do you,” she muttered. “You have a plan in mind?”

“A general idea, sure,” Flaker reassured.

Tila nodded. “Sounds like you two have set what you wanna do... Either way, next time we go back to town, drinks are on me.”