Fires raged across the breadbasket of the continent, a vast tract of fertile land that provided the bulk of the food of both kingdoms. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to describe it as previously fertile land. It had, in places, been scoured right down to the bedrock, and there weren't many crops that would grow directly in solid stone. Golems didn't need to eat, after all, so they hadn't bothered to try to be tidy about it.

Several cities had fallen before anyone even realised what was happening, and by the time that they did, it was already too late. Not that it would have helped had they noticed sooner; it had already been too late before the first golem had stepped outside of Glimmerhome. There was no power on the continent able to field an army of ten million, and with each city that fell, the stone buildings were deconstructed to make even more.

The twin kingdoms of Rudellia and Politellia, the two main powers of the continent, had already fallen into disarray, being at the epicentre of the crisis and having already spent their magical resources in the attempt to banish Anya. The very same attempt that had triggered this attack in the first place. The irony was thick enough to taste, but alas not thick enough to impede the continued march of the golems, as they spread to all corners of the continent on their inexhaustible march.

Keri stretched groggily. It had been a nice nap, and this was a very comfortable mattress she was laying on, but she couldn't quite recall why she'd been asleep. She sat upright and peered around at the room she was in. It was small, but quite homely, a log burning in a petite fireplace and a clock ticking away on the mantelpiece. There were even a few paintings hanging around. But despite the decoration, she couldn't place any of it. Hadn't she been driving her caravan, bringing wares to sell at Slightly-Newer-Than-Evennewerport-Port? She frowned as the memories started trickling back. They'd been attacked by bandits. The guards she'd hired had been slaughtered, and she herself had been captured, to be sold on the black market and fated to spend the rest of her life in slavery. She didn't remember being sold, but if this was where she'd ended up, things could have been worse. She struggled to her feet, but in her daze managed to remain balanced for only a few seconds before toppling back over with a bang.

The door opened, and in stepped a woman who, despite her shortage of clothing, gave off an absolute air of being in charge. Keri was struck with a sudden feeling of terror, as if her life could be snuffed out at any moment. She couldn't quite remember why, but she knew she must absolutely never get on this person's bad side. She desperately crawled back up to her knees. "Greetings, mistress."

Jill peered at her. "Please tell me you aren't a golem."

An odd request for her first order, but not a difficult one to fulfil. "I'm not a golem, mistress."

"Good. Then why are you calling me mistress? And if you try telling me it's because I'm the mayor of somewhere or other, it won't end well."

Keri pondered. She'd never owned slaves before, and had certainly never been one, so she wasn't entirely sure how they were supposed to address their masters. 'Mistress' had seemed like a reasonable choice, but apparently this eccentric individual found it distasteful for some reason. In that case, it was probably best to just ask. "Then how do you wish me to address you?"

"Jill will suffice. And what's your name?"

So she'd been traded away without anyone even bothering about her name? Despite the apparently good treatment, that still rankled. Was she so unimportant? "My name is Keri, mist... umm... Miss Jill."

Before Jill could respond, another voice sounded from outside the room. "Ooo, did she wake up?"

Another girl boisterously entered the room, this one apparently wearing all of the clothing that Jill was missing. Keri briefly wondered why they didn't share, before a knot in her stomach informed her that this new girl was every bit as scary as Jill was. An unclear memory surfaced, of seeing the two before. It involved an awful lot of red.

"Hi! My name is Anya. Do you want to be my friend?"

"Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Whatever you want!"

"Yay! Now I have two!"

Keri looked at the beaming, disarming smile on Anya's face. Why did she think this girl was scary? Another memory flickered, of a severed head rolling in front of her face. She dismissed it. She'd been afraid of the bandits, and had some bad dreams. That was all. It was over now. She had this pair of nice, friendly new mistresses. Or maybe Jill was the mistress and this Anya was a fellow slave? It didn't matter. She climbed back upright, feeling more steady on her feet this time. "So, what do you want me to do?"

"Let's play dress up! Jill did me, so I haven't had a chance to be on the other side yet."

Jill sighed as Anya dragged a confused-looking Keri past her and out of the room. In retrospect, she should have asked Anya to hold back; the prisoners had been rather traumatised by her display during their rescue. She hadn't realised how many bandits there would be, expecting only a couple of guards left behind. Too late to regret that now though, and they all seemed to have recovered enough to walk, Keri being the last of them. Now, as soon as Anya stopped messing around, they could pack the house back away and start walking towards the next town.

She glanced at the cave walls out of the window. It was impressive how Anya had managed to fit the two-story house into a cave only three metres high, but it beat sleeping on the cave floor, especially now that they had a half dozen former hostages to worry about, most of whom were more terrified of Anya than the bandits. At least one of them had accepted her offer of friendship. She was a bit odd, that Keri, and Jill couldn't help feeling there had been a misunderstanding somewhere. Still, it was no matter. They wouldn't be together for long.

She left them to their own devices, heading out of the house to poke at the bandits' ill-gotten gains. It wasn't like her and Anya needed any more cash, but maybe it could be returned to the former owners, or given to the captives.

Jill opened her mouth for the tenth time in the last five minutes. Also for the tenth time, she found that she lacked the words to articulate what she was thinking, and closed it again. In front of her, Keri bounced happily through the forest, jumping between shadows and giggling like a child, the little bells on her new collar and tail jingling in time with her footfalls. Jill instead turned to Anya, who was walking next to her. "You didn't do anything weird to her, did you?"

Anya looked hurt. "Of course not," she answered.

If only she could trust Anya's standard for 'weird'. It had, in retrospect, been a terrible idea to leave the two alone, a fact which had become abundantly clear the second she saw Keri leave the house. "And you insist she picked out that outfit herself? I'd have taken her for a fairly wealthy merchant, when we picked her up. Now she's... I don't even know what that is."

The other rescued captives followed behind in a far more subdued fashion, each clutching their own little bag of the bandits' gold, and keeping their eyes firmly downwards, not wanting to be a part of this conversation.

"What's wrong with it? She looks cute."

"Well, yes, obviously. But that's not normally the sort of outfit that one would willingly wear."

The other women trailing behind pretended to hear nothing, despite every single one of them wanting to scream about the hypocrisy of that comment. What sort of woman would willingly wear what Jill had on, either? Or, more accurately, what she didn't have on.

Jill inspected the surprisingly energetic Keri, who was simultaneously wearing the maid and sexy kitten outfits, her tail poking out from under her dress and waving from side to side as she moved. Despite her general bounciness and the surrounding forest, she was doing a marvellous job of keeping it all clean. "And she's wearing that tail?"

"Yup. When I mentioned how much you liked it when I wore it, she insisted."

Jill shrugged. Maybe she was just really thankful to her rescuers and wanted to repay them in some way? Still weird, but Jill was aware she hadn't exactly been entirely sane herself recently either. Ever since that time she'd... What had even happened? She'd woken up in her room back at the Marketplace of Affection, with Anya looking concernedly at her, and everything had been different. It was obviously all Anya's fault, somehow, but she was having fun, and now Keri looked like she was having fun too, so all was good. No problems here, so no reason to question it. No, wait, there was one important question that occurred. "I trust you washed it first?"

"Of course I did! I still remember everything you taught me about hygiene."

Jill was right; Keri was having fun. Obviously her previous rich-commoner outfit had no place on a slave, and the one called Anya had taken her away to change into something more appropriate. She pulled out dozens of outfits literally from nowhere; she must be a very powerful space mage to be able to do that so casually! And yet she was always acting so subservient to the one called Jill. Jill must be fearsome indeed! Most of the outfits Anya had made her try on had been too outlandish for her to consider keeping, but given what Jill and Anya were wearing, or weren't wearing, in Jill's case, obviously they didn't consider themselves tied down by any social norms.

By the time they'd finished, she'd settled on a plain maid's dress, which was more suited to her new station in life while not being a complete embarrassment. And then she'd seen the cat ears, and they were just so cute that she couldn't resist, and there was that black collar with the bell on, and of course a slave should have a collar. They also came with paws and a tail. The paws were right out; she'd need her hands to carry out her duties, whatever they may turn out to be. And the tail was... what even was that? How did that even work? And then Anya had told her and eww, no way. But then Anya had mentioned how much Jill liked it, and Jill was terrifying, so Keri should obviously be trying her best to appease her, and in went the tail. Unexpectedly, it didn't actually feel bad at all.

Of course, by this point she realised that her stated goal of not being a complete embarrassment had been missed by a wide margin, but as she inspected herself in a mirror, she had to admit that she did look cute. The way that Anya was squealing at her in delight left her with no way to back out now. And then Anya had put the paws on her anyway, and she hadn't had the heart to say no. Then they'd all left the house, and they were still somehow in the bandit's cave, despite the house being far bigger than it, and then Anya had picked up the house and casually tucked it away into a pocket, and Keri had realised what a small person she was in such a large and wonder-filled universe. To think she was happy with her caravan. She'd been introduced to more new concepts in the past hour than in her past decade. She decided she would follow her new mistress to the ends of the world, and experience as much of it as she could.

She did stop to consider why they were still in the bandit cave, despite her apparently having been sold off already, but her brain had decided the particular memories that would have helped her out there were strictly off limits. That was unfortunate; she may not have been looking forward to her future experiences quite as much had she realised how much gore they were likely to contain. But for now, she was happy, bouncing through the forest in childlike glee. The sun was bright, the future out of her paws, and she no longer had to worry about losing her livelihood with a single bad caravan run. Admittedly, that was because it had already happened, but at least it couldn't happen twice. She spread her arms wide and skipped in circles around the trees.