Yugikari blinked a bit as he looked down at them, staring in disbelief. "...a dragon... You are telling me that you found... a dragon."

"...yeah," Luridad rubbed her sleeve nervously, her head turned down.

"And you thought it was a good idea to face it head on," He muttered with his hand on his chin,

"That was my bad," Ikara responded with his hands on his lap.

The older man set his snow-white hands on the table, his expression trying to hold back the exasperation in his eyes. "And you say that you want to face another dragon in one month,"

Marahní nodded, her hands on her sides as she looked back at him. "That is true."

He leaned his elbow into the table, running his hand across his face as he took a profound, steady breath. Next, he let it out in a long, tired exhale. "Why?"

Without leaving another second of silence, Ikara clasped his fists, "Because we gotta prove to that Elizabeth girl that we won't fall behind just because she happens to have been born in a rich family."

He crooked an eyebrow, leaning a bit more into his hand. "They Percival heiress?" He questions, turning his attention to his daughter, "Luridad, I thought I had told you not to pay any mind to her; there is no winning against someone who will resort to changing the game."

Luridad brought her head up, her hand tugging tighter on her sleeve. "Well, of course I know that father, but it wasn't me... I mean, not exactly, she was the one messing with us first."

"What about you, Marahní?" Yugikari moved his glance towards the long-haired young woman. "I could expect Luridad to get lost in a rivalry, but I believed that you had already understood how not to play her game."

Marahní furrowed her expression, lowering her head in shame for a couple of seconds and holding her hands in her pockets.

Ikara stepped up, looking directly into the older man's blank eyes. "Mister Yugikari, please don't be mad at them," He pointed at himself. "I was the one who did all those things, I'm the one who didn't listen about the dragon, and I made that challenge to Elizabeth, so if you should be upset at anyone, then that should be me."

Then he breathed in, "But... I'm not going back on what I said to her," He added, clutching his hand on his chest. "If what you say is true, it means that girl has been diminishing my sister and your daughter for years, and that's something I am not going to stand, I don't care if she changes or breaks the rules, because I will push through them until I can win." He then pointed at him, his eyes tightening, shimmering with a glint of cindering resolve. "I have never stopped because someone thinks I'm not strong enough for the task; I won't let this be the first time!"

Yugikari looked down at him, his eyes unmoving as he let those words hang for a while. The kind of determination he displayed was the same as the glint in Marahní's eyes when she first arrived, and somehow, it seemed like the young man had maintained it even to this point.

"You... truly are her brother, aren't you?"

"You got that part right!" he nodded as he puffed his cheeks, then he cleared his throat, his hands held together as he looked up at him once more, "I mean, that is true, sir, and I am going to get stronger so I can win this challenge even if I have to do it on my own."

The older man exhaled, his hand running through his dark hair, "You are quite stubborn, Ikara, even for someone your age." He then pushed himself off the chair and stood back up. "Then again, something tells me that that is exactly the reason why you survived so much."

He looked up at him. "The people who taught me to fight would tell me that a lot too..." he huffed as he pushed some of his dark violet hair back.

"I see that I cannot stop you from continuing on with this idea of yours, but that doesn't mean I am going to let you throw yourselves at it and put our lives in danger again," he stated as he joined his sleeves. "This is why if you are going to prepare yourselves for taking on a dragon, then I am going to be the one to determine whether or not you are ready for this."

Ikara's orange eyes sparkled back a bit, "Does that mean you are going to let us do it?"

"Only if you are ready by the end of the month, like you said," Yugikari told him as he leaned down towards him, placing his hand on his head, "If I don't feel like you are ready by then, then you will have to abandon that challenge. Do we have a deal?"

He felt his hands clenching on the air as he listened to him, his mouth opening once more while he looked up at him. "Well... if that is another way to make a challenge, then I will make sure to show you I am ready before you know it!" He declared as he clenched his fists, "Remember that!"

The monochromatic man chuckled, ruffling his dark violet, "However you wish to take it, that is our choice," he let go of his head and stood back up, "You have a lot to grow if you want to convince me, so you better spend your time wisely, young one."

With that, he left the trio in the living room, the silence returning for a couple of seconds, until Ikara looked back at Marahní and Luridad. "Sooo.... Does that mean we are all clear?"

"Brother, I don't think you are realizing how little time a month is to get ready for something like this," the purple-eyed young woman meets him at his side with her hands on her hips, "That thing was just a low-class dragon and we barely came out of it alive, if we are to find anything higher than that then there is a chance, we won't even make it two steps."

"Well, that only means we have to work harder to make sure that we can take it on!" Ikara responded with an instant purpose. "I have no idea how that whole magic and spells stuff works, but I do know that training is the key to everything! So the more we push ourselves, the stronger we will get, which means we can't waste a single second!"

Luridad hummed, leaning into Marahní's shoulder while tugging her arms behind her back. "I think he's right, fallen angel, isn't that the same principle that you used when you started to learn all about the library so you could learn the spell you needed to bring him here?"

"I..." she crossed her arms and lowered her head, "Yes, but that was a whole different situation, I was dead set on that because I wanted to know if there was any family left I could go back to, this... this is just a petty rivalry, she is not worth this risk,"

"Petty rivalry?" Ikara repeated with a bothered expression, "There is nothing petty about a rivalry! Especially if it leads to wiping that smirk off her face,"

"I second that," Luridad lifted her hand.

Marahní narrowed her eyes ever so slightly while she leaned towards the couch, "Do you guys really think she is going to use her up on something like this? Has it ever occurred to you that she might have just accepted your challenge to humor you?"

"Nope!" Ikara responded without a second of hesitation, "I saw the little twitch in her eyes, that means she is just as invested in this challenge as I am, and I bet she is preparing for it right as we speak."

Meanwhile.

"A dragon? Elizabeth, are you trying to make me laugh? because I can assure you that you are failing miserably," A Man in a high-end tuxedo suit spoke as he looked down at the blond young woman.

"I can assure you, this is no joke father," Elizabeth said, her hands tugging at her back, her uniform perfectly aligned, and her expression fixed in reverence. "That new peasant boy dared to suggest that he could outperform me, and I wasn't going to let that stand,"

The father merely let out a sneer, his eyes narrowing. "That is a waste of time, and if there is one thing that a Percival can't do, it's wasting their time with a peasant."

She furrowed her expression a bit, her hands aching behind her back and clenching onto nothing, "I... understand that father, but a Percival should also always let others know why they are better than everyone else, and that boy is not going to understand until I show him."

"Elizabeth, a peasant will never be able to compare themselves to our family, and humoring them would be stooping down to their level, so you better not humor this peasant you're talking about," He told her as he tugged his hands on his front. "Understood?"

"But father-"

"I said understood," He repeated himself, his voice turning more menacing while his eyes glowed within the dark of the room, appearing like menacing orbs staring down at her.

The young woman lowered her head, her hand gripping her other wrist as her tone quieted nearly instantly. "Understood, Father."

"Good, now go make yourself useful," he told her, turning around and leaving the room without giving her a second glance.

The young blond woman kept her head lowered. When she couldn't hear her father's step any longer, she let out a scoff, her hands moving to her sides and balling into fists. "I'll show you what is useful... and I will show that peasant brute." She turned around, walking to the opposite side, her sapphire glance shimmering as she exited the hall.

Meanwhile

"I seriously doubt she cares about this that much," Marahní brushed her straight locks back while she looked back at the hyper-energetic pair.

"Well, I think she does, I saw it in her eyes when she was trying to keep that rich girl composure!" Ikara protested while he pumped his fists.

Luridad giggled, resting her elbow on her shoulder, "Something tells me he saw something else in there."

"Oh, so you were seeing it too?" the purple-eyed woman muttered, lowering her head and covering her mouth. "I thought I was hallucinating."

"Truth is, I thought it was both disturbing and fascinating at the same time, but do you think we should tell him?" Luridad whispered back.

"Tell me that?" Ikara asked from where he was standing, tilting his head, his hands stretched behind his head.

The young sorcerers blinked as she looked at him, standing up and rapidly clearing her throat. "Nothing, we were just speaking about... witch stuff," she muttered, pulling some of her hair behind her ear. "Anyways, if you really want to do this, then do you have a plan to prepare ourselves to be able to face a dragon in one month?"

"Hmmm," he tilted his head down and closed his eyes. "Nope!" He smiled widely, throwing his hands behind his back.

Marahní looked at him in sheer disbelief; her posture froze until her head dropped with a defeated sigh.

"Ah... sorry, sis," he pushed some of his hair back. "I ain't really used to this kind of planning,"

"We know, don't worry," Luridad patted her partner's back. "I think she just didn't expect you to be this different from her."

The young man's eyes furrowed, his expression dropping a bit more while his hand landed on his shoulder, "Yeah... sorry about that too."

"No...No," she lifted her hand and sat back up. "I should start getting in my head that your childhood and upbringing were considerably different than mine, and that I should not be doing things the same way as if it were just Luridad and me."

The monochromatic young woman nodded, "See, that's the spirits now, I am sure that if we put all our heads together, we can figure something out."

"Makes sense to me," he nodded, turning his glance towards her and his sister. "Why don't ya tell me how exactly you get stronger in this world? since things seem to work so differently."

"Well... a magic user can get more powerful in many different ways." Marahní tapped her chin. "Practicing is one of the most common ones, but others have different ways of achieving higher levels of magic. Studying has worked the most for me; we have some books around the house. So maybe giving them a read could be helpful?"

"Right... reading," Ikara muttered, his eyes averting their gaze. "Hmmm..."

"What's wrong?" Marahní tilted her head, then, upon receiving no response, her gaze turned softer. "Ikara... you don't know how to read?"

He sighed, returning his eyes to her. "Well, I never had the need back home; it's not like there were any books around either. I learned what I needed to survive. There wasn't a lot of time to do other stuff in my mind."

"I mean... if that's the case, maybe you could learn now," Luridad suggested with her hands on her back. "There is no one rushing you now, right? at least in that regard, you have all the time in the world."

"Even beyond that, reading is an essential skill in most worlds," the young sorceress added with her hands down. "Especially if you want to shut Elizabeth down, imagine what she will say when she finds out my brother can't read."

The young man scoffed, rolling his eyes. "I prefer not to imagine her in that scenario."

"Regardless," She walked back to the living room and brought up decently thin books from the small stand in front of the table, placing them down and signaling him to come over.

Luridad sat beside her in little time, Ikara following suit and kneeling down on the other side a couple of seconds later.

"This one is a basic spells book, we can expand your horizons beyond physical energy and teach you to read all in one go," She added as she placed her hand on the cover with a small smile. "See? I told you we would figure something out."

"Right..." He inclined his head awkwardly. "Are you sure about this, Marahní... I don't know if this kind of thing is for me."

"Well, you will never know if you don't try to at least once," She opened the back in between them. "Besides, you need to learn to read whether that's true or not," She pointed at the first page.

"Hmmmm...." He narrowed his eyes, his vision slowly and begrudgingly darting down towards her fingers. He stayed quiet for his face twisting until nearly a minute passed, and he finally exhaled, "Fine, I will try."

"Perfect," She nodded, signing to the first paragraph on the page. "Can you tell me what it says here?"

The dark-violet-haired man straightened himself, his eyes set on the lines, his eyes staying wide open while he didn't let a single word, stopping himself from speaking each time he was about to formulate a sentence.

"Come on, you can do it, just think about the words you say every day and try to relate them to what you are looking at on the page," Luridad chimed in.

He kept staring at the paper, his eyes following the same first line for a couple of seconds, trying to find some familiar words and correlate them to the few memories he had from reading back in his homeland, yet his head seemed to be failing him; none of the letters made sense to him, and it just had him going through the first line.

"Uh... maybe I should start reading it with you instead," Marahní hummed as she rubbed her chin.

The young man glanced back, letting out a small huff as he brushed some of his hair back. "I'm not sure... is this really how you want to spend the day? We really should be getting ready to face that dragon."

"We will start getting ready when I know you have made some progress in learning how to read. I am not going to let you go around the village without having at least some reading skills," She stated firmly as she crossed her arms.

He leaned back into the floor with a small sound of protest, his hands resting on either side of him. "I just don't understand why this is suddenly so important. I never needed to read before, and I don't know why I would have to be in such a rush to learn it now."

"Okay then, think about it like this," She turned to him and lifted her finger. "When you were back in that world, you learned to fight back. It's what people would need to do to survive."

"Pretty much yeah," He responded as he pushed himself up.

"It's not too dissimilar from why I learned magic in this place. Of course, I didn't have to learn reading from scratch since I never stopped, but in a sense, it wouldn't be different from the skills you collected there," she added as she placed her hand back down on the table, "Simply said, reading is as important in this world as knowing how to defend yourself,"

"That... does make a lot of sense," He muttered, some of his dark violet threats falling over his shoulder. "Doesn't mean I have to light it though," He added with a small huff while he puffed his cheeks.

"Hey, don't be too upset, the faster you get the hang of it, the faster we can get to the actually fun part of learning!" Luridad cheered as she poked her head from the side.

"Hey!" Marahní glared at her, "reading is pretty fun in its own right!"

"Is it?" Ikara questioned in confusion as he turned towards her, "It doesn't seem all fun to me."

"That doesn't count, you're still learning," She puffed her cheeks.

Luridad giggled, "You know I love studying with you, fallen angel, but I'm way more of a practice girl."

Marahní grumbled, slumping back into the rug. "You two don't know what fun is like."

Ikara snickered a bit. "I guess we all have our own ways to see things"

The young woman glanced back at him, her eyes furrowing once more while she hummed a bit. "Don't think that gets you off the hook, you still gotta learn to read weather you think it's fun or not."

He grumbled, his hair falling over his face as he leaned his head down, "Alright, I'll try again, but this better not be what we do all day."

"That depends entirely on you," she told him as she pointed at him.

"You can do it, I believe!" Luridad grinned as she lifted her thumbs.

The orange-eyed young man let out a breath of compliance, taking his attention back towards the back.

Meanwhile, in the depths of space.

"This... this is horrible." A humanoid figure in a partially armored suit walked along the remains of the ship that had sent a distress signal, blood and black substances mixing at the spots, body parts strewn along the walls, pierced by distorted spikes, almost as ghoulish as the ones outside the ship.

A second figure walked alongside them, this one more insectoid-like yet with an equally reinforced suit, custom to its proportions, and let out a small clicking noise that resembled something along the lines of a shudder. "What could have possibly been deranged enough to make something like this happen..."

"Of course, it had to be in this place..." the humanoid being held their weapon tightly close to their chest, moving slowly towards the console that the signal had been made from.

Every key was covered in blood, all splattered and drenched towards the screen; the only spot left unstained was the signal line, which blinked at short intervals. "Whatever it was, it's too late to save these people... we should destroy the ship in case whatever... thing did this burns and go back to the cruise ship." The insectoid was whipping the blood off the screen.

"Good idea," the humanoid turned around. "I'll go see if there's anything important while you start the self-destruct countdown.

The insectoid creature nodded, starting to press the keys as the humanoid turned around to search the corners of the ship; there were scratches everywhere, smashed craters, and blood that had long since dried, pieces of flesh so small they were completely unrecognizable from each other.

But there was one corner that the pieces lead too, and the sight on it was even more disturbing than anything they had watched on any other part of the ship. Bones, pieces of them, broken, shattered, and cut beyond any comprehensible shape, all of them piled on the space with not a single drop of blood in them. Instead, they were adorned with flesh and eyes that hung at the edges of a grotesque sculpture.

So nauseating that the uniformed frame had to step back, place their hand over where their mouth would be, then lean down, holding their stomach. They opened the lower part of their helmet and vomited with a guttural sound of repulsion.

After that, they whipped their mouth and closed the helmet as quickly as they could, taking deep breaths and rolling back into the opposite wall, their chest rising and shrinking with each long inhale, still holding their head from the intense, violent moment on their stomach.

As soon as they regained a semblance of their composure, they stood up and started to run away from the corner, making their way towards the console where the insectoid creature was still typing away. "Please tell me you're done with that; we need to get out of here right now."

Their partner clicked in response, tilting their head in confusion as they saw them in a semi-panicked state. "What happened to you? What did you see?" They asked in confusion and concern.

"You don't want to know," they muttered as they regained their breathing, standing back formally and looking at the screen. "Whatever that happened here, it was to go before it finds us."

The insectoid figure looked at them for a couple of seconds, noticing the way their hands were still shaking and the way there were still notes of shallow breathing in their words. "Okay, the self-destruction countdown is ready. Let's get out of here."

Upon pressing one more key, they pushed themselves away from the keyboard, the two of them getting outside of the abandoned ship and leaving for their own. Yet, even as they took off and watched the ship explode in a wide ball of fire in the distance, the pair was completely unaware that the thing they were running from had not been there long before they arrived.

And now it was with them.

Hours passed after the departure, and the ship had now reached the depths of space, landing on an enormous cruise ship that was nearly bigger than a moon. A pair of gates opened from the bottom section, letting the ship enter a hangar with many space vehicles of the same design parked in uniform lines.

"Thanks god..." the humanoid explorer sighed, leaning against their chair and letting themselves breath for some minutes.

The insectoid pilot turned around in their chair, looking back at them. "There is a reason why the only notes we have of that planet are 'do not go there.' I honestly don't know why the Federation made us go in the first place."

"You know how they are," they lifted their visor, revealing a pair of brown eyes that stared into the ship's ceiling. "Anything risks their technology falling into other hands is something they can't afford; they probably didn't even check what the coordinates were."

As the duo discussed, a blank eye opened behind a crack in the walls, as numerous words appeared on the screen one by one, all in languages that it couldn't understand, yet two of them caught its attention.

Impious

Malis

They kept repeating into its mind as two figures continued to talk. In the next instant, a hand crawled out of the turbine, pulling the whole mangled figure out, covered in black dust that made the void's white eyes even more striking. "Everything's ... cold here..."

The figure saw a vent in the middle of the hangar, causing it to tilt its head to the side and hear a small cracking noise. "Huh..."

"Impious... Malis... Impious... Malis..."

"Impious"

"Malis..."

"Impious... Malis... Impious... Malis..."

It kept muttering those words as it walked through the walls of a sewer system, its black dust leaving indistinct patches on the ground while the sound of the water running drowned out the sound of its own voice, the lights only illuminating small spots along the long corridor.

However, amid its mutterings and the flow of water, other signs began to emerge. It lifted its head, snapping and breaking noises coming out from its neck as they started to turn in the noise's direction. The more it advanced, the more they could see rays of light in the form of thin lines, his irises dilating in response as they took faster steps to get closer.

Each step that it made shook more and more of the ship engine's dust from its body, revealing the white, rigid skin and black cracks that spread around its anatomy. It almost walked past the lights until one of them hit its eye, causing the white iris to snap back, then its head, and then its whole body.

Through the bars of the sewer's tube gate, it watched a whole citadel, building as tall as a sky scraper or as simple as a family cabin, the streets were clean and filled with small ships, the parks were vast and filled with sounds of joy, the artificial skies were a light, beautiful blue, the color completely alien to the mangled creature.

Almost as much as the mix of creatures that roamed every spot, humanoids, insectoids, felines, avian, and shapeless blobs. It could barely process just how many different shapes passed before its eyes. And even then, a wide, unsettling grin cracked upon its face while it pressed its face against the metal bar.

"So... many...." Its hands gripped the metal bars with a toxic force that it didn't even notice.

So much force that the metal melted, causing it to drop along with other pieces of the metal. It crashed down in a dark spot between buildings, the snapping and cracking of its body mixing with the metallic thuds of the bar hitting the ground, a pained wail from its mouth that soon turned into a distorted laugh.

It grabbed the remains of the metal bars, sinking its teeth into them and swallowing them as if they were soft, each engulfed piece mixing a part of the broken bones, adding the body to stand back into its mangled shape, yet even when the bars were done, it tore more pieces of the ground and continued to devour them.

It only stopped as its ears picked up the sound of steps approaching the narrow space, its teeth midway sunk into a piece of the hard material that composed the ground.

"Is anyone there? We heard something falling,"

"If you're hurt, we can call an ambulance for you! There's no need to be afraid!"

It simply tilted its head, its blank eyes sticking out through the dark. "There's not?" It dropped the piece between its malformed teeth. "That's too bad.... Let me fix that..."

Without another word, the mangled figure leaped at the strangers, a dissonant, horrific sound coming out of its jaw as everything went black.

Meanwhile.

"Which... encompasses... the basic... principles.... Of magic," Ikara muttered with narrowed eyes as he stared down at the last line of the first page of the word, exhaling deeply and dropping his head. "Alright, I read the thing. Is that enough for you?"

"That's a start," Marahní closed the book.

Luridad lifted her hands in cheer, "A great start!" She exclaimed before she wrapped her arm around the purple-eyed woman. "Come on, fallen angel, a whole page for someone who hasn't read in years is amazing! I think you can give him a break."

The young woman blushed at the sudden contact, her voice lowering a bit as she looked down. "Okay, Okay fine, you got a good point, we can continue the reading lessons tomorrow,"

"Great!" Ikara grinned and pumped his fists, "Now we can get to preparing to face that dragon!" he added as his orange eyes brimmed with energy.

"Uh... yeah. About that..." Marahní brushed her hair back. "I think we took a little more time than we expected. It's already nighttime, so I think it would be better if we just got dinner and then went to sleep."

".... What?"

"Hey, don't be too discouraged, we can totally start training tomorrow!" Luridad tried to reassure him as she patted his back. "Look at it this way, if you already have a good head start on learning how to read, it will take less and less time, and we will be able to focus fully on training in no time!"

"Hmmmm..." the young man let out a small huff as he crossed his arms and looked down for a couple of seconds. "Are you sure we can't even spend a little bit more time up?"

Marahní leaned her head forward, carefully placing he hand on her brother's shoulder. "Ikara, you need to sleep. Insomnia is not going to do you any good. The more energy you have, the more time we will have to prepare tomorrow."

"What's insomnia?" He asked as he raised an eyebrow

She sighed, "The point is that sleeping will be better for us. Can you trust me on that?"

The dark-violet-haired man scoffed, brushing some of his hair back. "Fine... you two are way too smart to go against you anyway."

"It's alright, dude, you'll get accustomed to this place eventually," Luridad told him with a sweet smile. "Now let's go eat dinner!" she said while she lifted her hands and started to run over.

"Good thing I'm starving!" Ikara added and ran after her, smiling widely once more.

Marahní stood up, dusting herself off and smiling a bit. "Those two are going to get me in so much trouble..."

The trio went had dinner, talked a bit between themselves and to Yugikari about their day and their plans for the next one, after that they thanked him for the food before they left to the get ready to sleep.

Yet in the middle of the night Marahní could hear some soft noises coming from her window, causing her to stir a bit one of her eyes opening as she started to sit up from her bed, her purple gaze moving towards the glass surface, landing towards the house's backyard. In there, she saw her brother, his fists covered in orange flames, orbs of energy floating around him as he used them to shadow box around the room, moving around with swift steps, the auburn lights faintly illuminating his dark purple mane, his eyes shining within the dark of the night and letting see the drops of sweat across his face.

The young woman rubbed one of her eyes, leaning into her arm as she watched him throw fists against the orbs, moving from side to side, his expression tightened with a full attention, almost as if he was completely absent from the world around him.

She breathed out, resting her head on her shoulder, her expression a mix of exhaustion, awe and worry all at once. "He is... incredibly stubborn."

"Yep," Luridad suddenly leaned over her shoulder, seemingly appearing out of nowhere, making Marahní jump back with a small yelp.