The formation of a rather unexpected duo happened after Ari and Fen decided to take a day off to escape from the cold mountain the rest of the group was exploring. The two got along quite well, though, and decided to work together on the biome the wolf was planning to create in Sophia’s domain.

“Are we there yet?” While they were having a great time, Sophia’s experience was a little more debatable.

“Good question!” Maya and Anna looked just as miserable when they were lagging behind Aura, Steph, and Chloe while climbing up the snowy mountain.

"You know you can just look up to find the answer, right?" Steph lifted her arm to point toward the summit, which was still nowhere to be seen.

“…” The trio didn’t like that answer.

“Also, don’t act like the three of you are having a hard time!” She then pointed at the cats, or rather at the ground below them. While she and the other two were wading through snow that was at least one meter high, the fact they had a great time doing so aside, the ground below Sophia, who had Anna and Maya clinging to her arms on each side for maximum warmth, was completely free of snow. “You’re heating the air around you so much that the snow is melting instantly! Look behind you! You’re creating an actual path up the mountain!” Behind them was a roughly 1.5-meter-wide path where the snow had melted all the way to the stone layer of the area they were walking through.

"We'd die without it!" While the cats had agreed to continue the exploration, they also said they would never stop complaining, and they were certainly holding up to that promise.

“Stop syncing like that all the time!”

“No!” They disagreed with her.

“Ha…” The dog-girl gave up. “Well, you’re at least keeping up and here, so I’ll cut you some slack.”

“Speaking of,” Maya got interested in that part. “Ari and Fen, huh? That’s an odd duo, isn’t it? I wonder what they’re up to together.”

“That’s an interesting question!” Aura also was curious about it. “Though, knowing my Fenny, I wouldn’t be surprised if he naps the entire day away.”

“I can see that happening.” Sophia agreed with her. “I wonder if Ari would join him~. I mean, after she was so whiny about the cold yesterday, this would be the perfect comfy countermeasure.”

“That’s something I would do!” Anna nodded a few times. “It doesn’t really sound like Ari, though.”

“Fair.” The short tiger agreed with that.

“If anything, she’d probably be out for revenge.” The princess tilted her head. “You know, for us cats betraying her.”

“Ah.” The blonde hadn’t thought about that. “She’s going to burn down my domain!” She then proceeded to panic.

“That sounds fun!” Maya liked the thought of that. “Even more things to look forward to when we get home!”

“Shut up!” Sophia didn’t want to hear it.

“I can definitely see it happen.” Anna went along with the cat-girl.

“I hate all of you.” The short tiger wasn’t a fan of the conversation. “L-Let’s continue exploring the mountain!” She wanted to distract herself.

“I’m not going to say no to that!” Steph immediately got even more motivated.

“Absolutely!” Chloe thought so, too.

“Let’s climb to the summit and pour one out for Sophia’s destroyed domain up there!”

“Well, I know for sure that one biome’s going up in flames. Do burnt pines smell as good as fresh ones?”

“I’m sorry! I went too far!” As she liked her pine forest a lot, the wolf immediately regretted her teasing. “Please let my pines live!”

“Haa, fine.”

“Thank you very much!”

“Let’s just try to reach the top and see if we can spot something interesting from there.” Sophia had enough and started walking again while dragging the other two cats, who were clinging to her arms for warmth, with her.

“Yay!” Steph, as usual, was raring to go.

----------------

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” After around an hour of climbing, Sophia made a horrible discovery when she looked towards the sky. “We already have enough! There’s no need to start snowing now!”

“Sophia, do something!” Anna looked equally disturbed when she looked up.

“What she said!” So did Maya.

“You three have to be the most melodramatic people I ever met.”

“That’s just simply not true.” The trio, once more, completely synced their reply.

“Tell me one person that’s worse than you!” She stared at them. “ONE single person!”

“Ari.” They answered at the same time again. “She was much worse than us yesterday and even refused to come with us today!”

“…” Steph paused for a moment. “Okay, fine, you idiots win that round.”

“Ha!”

“Anyway!” The dog rolled her eyes. “It’s just some snowflakes! Very light ones, too!”

“It doesn’t change the fact that there’s way enough snow around here already!”

“Exactly!” Maya and Anna agreed with the blonde.

“Does the snow even affect you?” Chloe tilted her head while looking at the cats. “I see the snowflakes falling about you, but they disappear before they get close to you. Probably melting by the heat bubble around you, right?”

“Oh, now that you mention it!” Sophia only then realized what was going on above her. “I guess it’s not that bad, then.”

“You’re the best!”

“I love you!” The two cats only clung stronger to the blonde’s arms.

“Any time~.”

“Enjoy being sandwiched?” Steph briefly glanced at Maya and Anna doing their best to stick as close as possible to Sophia to be in the middle of the warmth generation she was doing before staring at her sister.

“I can’t complain~.” She smiled back at her. “Well, I might be doing nothing but complaining today, but surely not about that~.”

“I have to admit that I’m a little envious.” She couldn’t hide it. “Getting so much attention from two beauties!”

“Hey!” Chloe didn’t like that.

“What?” Steph just tilted her head. “Look at her and tell me she isn’t enviable.”

“…” The fox stared at Sophia for a moment. “Fine, being popular seems to come with quite a few nice benefits.”

“Hating the cold does come with some benefits~.” The blonde looked and sounded rather smug. “Okay, knowing that the snow can’t harm us, let’s continue!”

"Even without the heat barrier, it couldn't possibly hurt you!” The dog rolled her eyes.

“We beg to differ!” The cats replied together again.

“Haa…”

----------------

They kept climbing up the mountain for about two more hours, and luckily, it stopped snowing even faster than it started, so it hadn't turned into a bother for anyone. Even if some of them loved it, it wasn't helping when you were trying to scale a mountain.

“Oh?” Sophia looked up after the sky had cleared up and spotted something interesting now that they were able to see farther than before. “

“Mhm?” Steph did the same. “You’re right! It was hard to see because it was kinda cloudy and foggy before, but we’re close!”

“I don’t think it actually stopped being foggy, though.” Chloe turned around while looking down the path they came from. "It seems more like we passed the fog layer, and we're in the clear zone now." Looking back, they weren’t able to see down all the way, thanks to a layer of fog wrapping around the middle part of the mountain.

“Makes sense!” The blonde nodded a few times. “Explains the bad weather, too. Though, I was hoping to get a good view of the area if we reached the top. That could be hard with all the fog below us…"

"That would be very unfortunate." Anna agreed with her. “I hope it will be gone by the time we reach it.”

“You do know that there’s a pretty easy solution for that, right?” Aura just looked at the tigers.

“Really?” The girls tilted their heads.

“Yeah…” Somehow sounding disappointed, the wolf then went silent for a few moments. Then, things turned a little turbulent. Strong winds formed everywhere around the group before the gusts traveled down the mountain. They were so strong that they shot right through the fog further down. The air movement then caused the fog to fully disappear. Doing that a few more times, Aura then caused all the mist in the visible area further down the mountain to disappear.

“Right!”

“I forgot about magic!” The tigers seemed quite impressed.

“Hehe.” The wolf liked their reaction.

“Is that really the solution, though?” Chloe sounded a little dubious while she was looking at the result. “Sure, the fog is gone, but you’ve swept up so much snow that you’ve caused an avalanche and a snowstorm at once…” She pointed further down the mountain, where everything had turned into chaos.

“Ah.” Aura hadn’t thought that her actions could’ve possibly had consequences. "It's fine! I've checked with my detection magic before, and no living being was down there, anyway."

“It doesn’t help with the visibility, though.” Steph lightly shook her head. "This is the other side of the mountain we haven't explored, after all."

“Ah.” The wolf reacted the same. “It’s fine! It will calm down eventually, and we’ll be able to see.”

“If there’s anything left to see.” Maya also had to add something. “Everything worthwhile might be covered in snow from the avalanche.

“Ah.” Aura was attacked from all sides. “It’s fine! This is just the first mountain of the range. If there’s anything interesting in the first place, it would be deeper inside.”

“How do we get deeper inside, though?” Anna tilted her head. “The valley we have to cross for that is now covered in probably 50 meters of snow that shot down the mountain.”

“Ah.” She wasn’t getting a break anytime soon. “It’s fine! Once we’re down, I’ll use some more wind to get rid of it again.

“What if you only create more chaos doing that?”

“Ah.” The wolf wasn’t able to have any different reaction. “It’s fine! Actually, yeah, it is fine! We love chaos, after all!"

“Fair enough.” The girls accepted her final flimsy excuse.

Once that issue was taken care of, the group continued their ascend while also increasing their pace as the summit had finally come into view.

 

 

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