"Many useful items can be made from Crimtane," Eric shrugs.

"You know what? Fair. But only if they're really useful." She still puts a spare bolt of silk over Faye's tray of eyeballs.

That afternoon, she decides to fly past the edge of the island. At first she was sticking near her house in case someone from Earth came to rescue her, then she was sticking around to be near Eric and her house and her mine, but she really ought to see what else is out there. She decides to go north, because why not north, and sets out.

To the north, there's a jungle. It's extraordinarily green. There are massive pits leading into the ground, which would be unusual in an Earthly jungle.

There are three more clouds. One has a decently sized lake. The others have houses. None have signs of habitation, all have conspicuous treasure chests.

She comes across a sphere of rock about ten meters across with a vein of diamonds peeking out the surface; when the diamonds are mined out, they lead to a compartment made of gold bricks with a crystal heart inside.

The edge of the island tapers off into a sandy beach, with an ocean of sparkling blue water extending into the distance. Not much distance, though. There's a swirling bank of completely opaque fog about fifty meters out.

So many cool things to discover! She'll check out the fog bank, but first, what's in those pits?

They're massive. And, as usual, deeply structurally unsound. There's a good number of giant bees, spiky green slimes, and carnivorous plants with unreasonably long and flexible stems. There's also a couple of treasure chests, one at the bottom of a pond and the others in strange little iridescent shrines. In the chests she finds one pair of boots which promises to let her walk on water, one pair which promises to enhance her speed, and an anklet made of vines which also promises to enhance her speed. There's also a wooden chest close to the entrance of the first pit containing a shiny brass aglet, which promises to enhance her speed further, if she can figure out how to actually equip it. (It would probably involve some shoe surgery.)

More speed is pretty cool! Maybe it will help with flying speed too, that would be awesome. Her boots don't actually have shoelaces, but they do have plenty of metal filigree she can encase the aglet in.

Encasing the aglet works, and increases her flight speed proportionally! The Hermes Boots can be concealed with her existing boots as a vanity item, with the anklet tucked inside. The three items together increase her top speed by almost 50% overall, though it takes a few seconds to accelerate fully.

What fun! She flies around for a while enjoying herself, then heads into the fog bank over the water.

The fog is thick, and damp, and muffles the noises of seabirds and the smell of saltwater as she passes through. Then, after what feels like just a few feet, she's through the other side.

There's another beach, about fifty meters away. Past it is a patch of tundra, with a bizarre structure built in the middle of it, made partly out of ice and partly out of wood and partly out of polished marble. It's very haphazardly constructed, parts of it sticking out into open air, but it doesn't wobble or sway at all. It looks... out of place.

What a cool structure! It probably has some awesome loot and might even have another robot-person like that castle she visited awhile ago. It might also have something that needs fighting in it, of course, so she has Daphne in hand as she approaches and looks for entrances.

As she approaches, it becomes clear that this building is floating unsupported in the air. There are landing platforms by the doors. Several meters below is a shallow pool of lava, with a handful of coins scattered about it from unfortunate slimes.

Inside, it’s even more of a hodgepodge than it was outside. There’s a small child in a canvas hat pacing back and forth in a room made of obsidian bricks, a mustached man with a rifle sitting at a golden chair, and a massive chamber which seems to be made entirely of raw meat, with a mildly uncomfortable-looking dryad sitting inside. There’s also a row of treasure chests with little skulls on them, below a panoply of strange devices including a loom, a keg, and a green anvil.  

Oh hey, it’s Eric. What’s he doing here?

She makes small talk with the child and the man with the mustache, but moves on after a couple minutes each when they prove to be robots.

Oh no, the poor dryad! Margaret takes her by the hand and leads her out of the meat chamber, if she'll cooperate with this, and into a less awful room.

Treasure chests and keg get their contents examined, and the green anvil gets examined as well.

"Oh hello, you're an identical duplicate of Eric! Is your name also Eric or do you have a different one?"

The child tries to send her on a quest to get him a certain fish. The man with the gun leers vaguely at her. The dryad cooperates with the move, but wanders back into the meat chamber shortly after. 

The chests’ contents are varied! One contains dozens of stacked metal bars, tin and silver and iron and gold and cobalt and something purple and something brown-and-orange and something bright pink and something bright red and something faintly shimmering grey-and-gold. One contains about a dozen different kinds of flowers and seeds. One contains a slightly threatening collection of swords; another contains an arsenal of guns; another holds colorful books, staves, and wands. One contains such an array of junk it's hard to imagine a connecting feature: a Band-Aid, a megaphone, a sextant, and various other nonsense. There's also one containing half a dozen glowing spheres, one with blocks of wood and stone of various kinds, one for some reason containing only a large pumpkin and a stacked bolt of silk...

There's a lot of chests.

Eric's clone smiles vacantly. "Greetings, Margaret. I'm Joe, Ari's Guide. Is there anything I can help you with?"

She will get the kid a fish but not right this minute. The leering man is an unpleasant surprise; few men back home would waste time leering at a magical girl, especially one with as many points as she's rocking. If the dryad wants to be in the meat room that's her perogative. Maybe she can remodel the meat room and that will make her happier.

"Holy cow, are these books?" She doesn't even hear Joe; she's too busy Reading All The Books.

The book closest to her has a cover made of opaque crystal and pages that shimmer in the light!

It's full of random scribbles. When she looks at them, though, she feels the knowledge of a spell settle into her like a revelation: Shadecrystal Barrage. It's like a sandblaster, but with tiny razor-sharp crystals imbued with frostfire! The "text" fades from the shimmering pages, and the book is left blank.

"Wow, that was a weird experience. Benevolent kind of weird, but still not what I'm used to." She grabs the next one and opens it, slightly more braced this time.

“Hey, put that down! It’s dangerous and expensive!”

Another little boy appears at the head of the stairs, this one wearing crystalline armor and holding a large green sword. “What are you, anyway? You don’t look like a construct, but monsters don’t talk...”

"Oh my gosh are you a human being? I'm a human too, I'm a magical girl from Earth!"

“...holy shit! Yeah, I’m human, I’ve never been to Earth but I hear it’s lovely, what’s a magical girl? When’d you get here, what’ve you fought, have you filled up your health and mana yet-“

He pops a safe onto the floor and retrieves a stack of heart crystals and star crystals, which he tosses to her. 

She snags the crystals out of the air. "Holy crap you really are human that's so great! How are you not from Earth, the Earth I was on didn't have any space colonies or anything. Magical girls are people who can change their appearance and clothing to look like anything as long as it's human enough but not too human and we get powers, I've been here a few weeks and fought the Eye of Cthulhu, how long have you been here?"

“I didn’t live in space, I lived in the Nevernever. I’ve never heard of anybody who could change their body that freely and still considered themselves human, but I don’t know everything, I guess. I’ve lived here for about three months, I killed the Eye really early but most recently I’ve been killing Calamitas, and it’s been pretty cool but I kind of miss my mom.”

"Huh. Where I'm from everybody knows about magical girls. Maybe we're from parallel Earths. I miss my parents too, and my friends. What's the Nevernever?

“Oh, I didn’t have friends, just Mom. The Nevernever’s where faeries live, it’s a sort of hidden world that exists opposite Earth. I’m not a faerie, but Mom is.”

"You didn't have friends? Well, you can be friends with me if you like! Amd the Nevernever sounds pretty neat."

“Thanks! What else... oh, what kind of armor are you wearing?”