"It's so warm. I haven't felt this warm in days," Tess thought to herself as she started to wake up. "It feels so nice, I bet Art's already up and built up the fire too. Art... did that really happen? Did he really tell me that he loves me, or was that just a dream? I guess I'll have to see how Art acts around me when I get up."

Tess snuggled her pillow as she smiled. "Since when was my pillow so comfortable. It's firm, soft, and warm all at once. Maybe I should get Arthur a pillow like this, he does like practical...." Tess stopped her thoughts as she realized two things.

One, she didn't remember pulling out her pillow last night. Two, her "pillow" was rising and falling in a steady manner. Tess shot open her eyes to realize she was sleeping on Arthur's chest.

"HOW DID THIS HAPPEN!?" Tess internally screamed in a shocked panic. "I clearly remember faceing Art, looking into those handsome ocean blue eyes as we held hands and drifted off into sleep, ok maybe the hand holding was a dream." Looking up, Tess could see Arthur had his head still turned in the direction she remembered laying in. "Ok, I must have somehow rolled on top of Art in my sleep last night. I can't let Art see me like this, he might think I was trying to do something inappropriate and become nervous around me." Tess then began to calm down. "All I need to do is get off Art before he wakes up, and if I wake him up, I'll just play it off that I was sleeping beside him."

Tess tried to carefully push herself off of Arthur, but couldn't as one of Arthur's hands was on her back holding her down. One of Arthur's fingers then touched her lips.

"Shhhhhh," Arthur whispered quietly.

Tess now knew Arthur was awake and was already aware of the position they were in. But the more concerning thing was that something seemed to be wrong, as Arthur seemed to be focused elsewhere. Focusing on her senses Tess could hear something breathing deeply, and claws scratching the ground as it walked.

"A mana beast," Tess thought to herself as she pieced everything together. "It must be close by for Arthur to be paying it so close of attention, but also far enough that he doesn't feel he needed to act just yet."

Tess felt Arthur's finger slowly leave her lips. Even though she couldn't see his hand, she could see his arm slowly moving, and immediately knew where it was going, to his sword. Tess was pretty sure she knew where her bladed staff was, but in her current position there was no way to retrieve it without moving off of Arthur and possibly startling the beast. Instead she began to prepare a wind spell that should at least do some damage.

Not being able to see or communicate with Arthur, Tess waited for him to make the first move. She could hear the beast's footsteps getting closer and closer. The footsteps stopped as Arthur's body tensed. Tess began to fall off of Arthur as he began to roll towards the beast, forcing Tess also to roll towards the beast. As she saw the beast standing on its hind legs, she unleashed her spell, a violent blast of wind that threw the beast back several feet.

Quickly they both scrambled to their feet in case the battle would continue. The beast itself resembled a polar bear, was about the same size as Grawder with ice in its fur, and had something sticking out of the front of its head between its eyes. At first Tess thought this was a horn, but upon closer examination she realized it was actually Arthur's sword, and attached to that sword was a thread of mana. The thread then tightened and the translucent blue blade flew out of the beast's skull, and landed in Arthur's hand.

"We need to hurry up and get out of here now," Arthur stated urgently as he checked their clothes by the smoldering fire. "Our other clothes are dry and warmer so let's change quickly too."

"R-right," Tess replied uncertainly and a little sad sounding, as she walked over to her clothes.

Arthur noticed this and looked at her puzzled as she avoided his gaze. It didn't take but a few seconds for Arthur to realize what was going on.

"She isn't sure if last night happened," Arthur groaned in his head as he rubbed his temples. "I swear, I feel like I've fallen into some cheesy teen romance novel."

Arthur walked over to Tess, as a young man on a mission. "Tess," Arthur said, getting her attention. She slowly turned to face him, and just as he arrived placed his hands on her cheeks to raise her head so she was looking right at him. He then leaned in and kissed her, a little bit deeper than last night. "Yes last night happened, yes I said that I love you, and yes I said I'm ready to be in a relationship with you. I wish we could relax and just enjoy being together as a couple, but I'm pretty sure that was a cub we just killed, and I don't want to be here when the mother comes around."

Tess' eyes were wide from the kiss, and a smile formed on her lips as Arthur put all her uncertainty to rest.

"Right, let's hurry," Tess replied with renewed energy. She then grabbed her clothes, threw the blanket over the bar that just held her clothes, and walked to the other side and quickly began changing.

Arthur smiled as he shook his head in amazement over her sudden mood change. In his past life as Grey, he never once went out on a date. The closest thing he ever had to a date was when he hired high end prostitutes to handle his physical urges, and he usually never saw the woman again after that. So as he started also changing his clothes he decided that if he was going to make this relationship work, he was going to need some help.

—————————————————————

"Curtis move!" Feyrith yelled as he cast his water serpent spell.

Curtis was hanging on for dear life on the back of the boss, one of his swords lodged in its back. As the dungeon boss flew low enough to the ground Curtis pulled out his sword as he allowed himself to fall off. Two seconds later Feyrith's water serpent collided with it, knocking it out of the sky, and crashing into the ground. Everyone took a second to breathe as they wondered if Feyrith had managed to bring it down.

However that was not the case. The boss got back to its feet letting out an angry cry as it spread out its wings. The boss was essentially a large blue bird. There was an almost transparent three point crest on its head that was either crystal or ice, and its body sparkled from the small ice crystals in its feathers.

"Of course it wouldn't go down that easily," Lunaris commented frustratingly as he caught his breath.

"Of course not. This thing isn't the dungeon boss for nothing," Curtis replied from atop Grawder.

The bird began flapping its wings and took to the air again, but held its position above them and began flapping its wings violently. The wind produced by the bird was powerful enough that everyone had to brace themselves to keep from being knocked back. Because they were closer, Lunaris and Curtis had to thrust their swords into the ice while Grawder used his claws to keep from being blown back. To make the wind even worse, it was even colder than any other part of the dungeon they had faced before, cold enough that frost was beginning to form on everyone. Small shards of ice were mixed in, leaving small cuts on any exposed skin that was hit. The air had become so cold that even breathing began to hurt as it began to freeze their lungs with every breath. Lunaris and Curtis cast fire spells on themselves to keep from freezing, while Elijah created a stone wall to protect them from the direct effects of the wind, while Lilia cast a wind barrier along with Clair casting a fire spell to keep the air from getting too cold around them. Feyrith cast a water dome spell to protect himself, but with the extreme cold it began to freeze.

After almost a minute the wind stopped and the bird flew back to a ledge that appeared to have its nest. There it stood watching and waiting to see what the young adventurers would do next.

Elijah removed his stone barrier to check on the others. Curtis, Lunaris, and Grawder were all fine, with only a small amount of frost on their bodies.

"Feyrith!" Claire cried out.

Feyrith's water dome was completely frozen solid. Orson and Claire ran to the dome and began beating on it, trying to learn if Feyrith was ok. After a few strikes the ice began to break away, and they could see him on one knee shivering uncontrollably, but ultimately ok.

Seeing that everyone seemed to be ok, and not going anywhere, the boss spread out its wings and let out a ferocious cry. Suddenly a wall of ice shot out of the ground and ceiling, with them meeting together and effectively cutting Lunaris, Curtis, and Grawder off from the rest of the party.

Lunaris and Curtis ran to the ice wall and hit it with their most powerful fire spells. The two spells hit close enough together to melt a fairly sizable area, however the damage was nowhere close to deep enough to break through.

"Lilia! Kathyln!" Curtis yelled as he beat on the ice wall, but it was too thick to hear or see anything from the other side.

"Curtis, look out!" Lunaris yelled as he tackled him out of the way of several ice spears fired at them from the boss.

"Thanks," Curtis replied as he realized what almost happened thanks to him zoning out.

"No problem, but we need to focus. There's no back up coming for a while now, so this battle is all on us," Lunaris stated as he kept his eyes on the boss.

Just then the boss sent another barrage of ice spears towards Curtis, who was still on the ground. Lunaris drew the sword from his hip and ignited it in blue flames, then thrust his blade forward.

"HELLS CYCLONE!" Lunaris called out, as a blue tornado shot forth from the tip of his blade, and engulfed the ice spears, turning them to water as they emerged from the fire. However one of the spears was a little more resilient than the others, and emerged from the flames, stuck into Lunaris' left leg.

"Lunaris are you all right?" Curtis asked in a concerned tone.

"Yeah," Lunaris replied as he pulled the dagger long shard from his leg. "Luckily it was a shallow wound."

"Good," Curtis replied as he stood ready to fight as he glared at the boss. "No more holding back. We have to give it everything we've got if we want to make it out of this in one piece."

"Agreed. Do you have a plan?" Lunaris asked.

"I do, but I'll need your help. I need you to get that frozen chicken to the ground so I can get ahold of it. You can use Grawder if you need him," Curtis instructed.

Lunaris bit his lip as he looked up at the large bird. He had an idea how he was going to make this plan work, but it meant doing something his father strictly told him not to do.

"Ok, I can do it," Lunaris replied, deciding that disobeying his father this once shouldn't be a problem.

With that the two split up, with Grawder reluctantly following Lunaris. Lunaris was running towards the boss perched on its ledge, as he activated his beast will. Black wisps of smoke poured from his body, completely engulfing him. The smoke almost appeared to soak into Lunaris's body almost like a second skin over his clothes and armor, with only a mantle flowing behind him still looking like smoke. Lunaris's body now looked like the night sky with golden specks looking like stars. His fingers now looked like sharpened claws, his head had what looked like slicked back cat ears, with his eyes completely white.

With his transformation complete Lunaris's speed increased drastically, leaving Grawder struggling to keep up. The boss was focused on Lunaris now, and saw him as its main threat, and flew from its perch. Once at the frozen wall beneath the perch, using his claws Lunaris began climbing, taking long jumps even greater than even the most nimble of augmenters could hope to achieve. Once high enough he leapt from the wall towards the boss. The boss tried to back away, but Lunaris was still able to scratch its chest with his claws.

Lunaris fell to the ground, doing a quick roll before jumping back up to his feet while turning back towards the boss. A quick glance to his left and Lunaris saw Curtis off to the side and had activated his own beast will. Lunaris still didn't know the full plan, but was still going to do his part, and took off in a dead sprint towards the boss.

The boss saw Lunaris coming and began flapping its wings violently towards him. However instead of a blast of subzero air, shards of ice, some as long and sharp as daggers came flying at him. Lunaris' beast will granted him drastically increased speed and agility, so dodging most of the ice shards was easy, and for those he couldn't dodge, his claws made quick work of.

As he closed the distance the boss tried to fly up and out of the way, however Lunaris jumped up, his claws ready to strike. The boss however launched another barrage of ice spears at Lunaris, along with another frigid blast of air. Lunaris was able to handle the ice spears well enough, but there was nothing he could do about the sub zero blast of wind and was sent back down to the ground. He was about to relaunch his attack, but the boss created four ice tornados between them. Shards of ice spun around within the sub zero cyclones, constantly firing shards wildly while ripping new ones from the ground. Lunaris wanted to continue attacking, but with shards of ice flying randomly from every direction, all he could do was focus on dodging and deflecting the deadly frozen projectiles.

However as the boss kept Lunaris on the defensive, it was reminded that he wasn't alone, as Grawder leaped up into the air pouncing right at it. Grawder connected with the the boss and began to force it down, however the boss was able hit him with one of its wings and knocked Grawder off, leaving multiple ice shards embedded in its side.

However it was too late for the bird and it wasn't able to recover in time, resulting in it crashing into the ground several feet from Grawder. The boss quickly got to its feet, and saw Lunaris a good distance away, deactivating his beast will.

Suddenly Curtis landed on the back of the boss, throwing it into a panic as it took off into the air. The ice bird jerked and bucked in an effort to shake Curtis off its back, but he held on tight refusing to let it get away.

"WORLD HOWL!" Curtis yelled, as he released the powerful attack he gained from Grawder's will right to the back of the bosses neck.

The blast was so powerful at this close of range that Curtis was forced off the beast, ripping the feathers he was hanging on to out with him. Curtis flew through the air and crashed on the ledge where the bosses nest was.

Curtis pushed himself back up to his feet and staggered over to the edge. "Is it dead?" Curtis yelled asking.

Lunaris was already at the boss and looked down at it, specifically where it's head used to be. There was now a half circle dipped down at its shoulders, everything else was ripped off from the attack.

Lunaris looked back up to the former prince. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's dead," he replied.

Curtis sighed in relief as he turned around to look for a way down, which didn't exist. The only thing up there was the bosses nest, which was littered with the bones of dead mana beasts, and something that caught his attention.

Just then the ground shook, then stopped, then repeated several more times until a hole in the ice wall was blown open by a series of large black metal spikes. The spikes retracted and Claire and Elijah crawled in.

"Lunaris? Curtis? Are you two ok?" Elijah called out.

"We're fine," Lunaris replied as he dropped down to sit and rest next to the dead boss.

The rest of the party began to file in.

"Hey Curtis," Lilia called out from the ground. Curtis came to the edge and looked down. "Do you need help getting down, or are you going to build yourself a home up there?"

"Depends, would you want to move in with me?" Curtis replied.

Lilia's eyes widened as her cheeks blushed. She was at a complete loss for words from this comment. Suddenly Curtis was hit in the face with a snowball, conjured by Kathyln.

"Brother, you both are still too young for you to be talking like that," Kathyln commented emotionlessly.

A few seconds later Curtis was back on the ground, courtesy of a wind spell from Lilia. He then kissed Lilia's cheek as a thank you, leaving her completely frozen in place, as he walked over to Lunaris.

"Hey, about what you saw me do, can you not tell anyone about that?" Lunaris requested quietly so no one could hear.

"Why?" Curtis asked as he extended his hand.

"My father. He forbade me to use it until he was satisfied with my combat skills without it," Lunaris explained, as Curtis pulled him back to his feet.

"I don't think that will be a problem," Curtis replied as they ended the handshake and he looked to the rest of the group who nodded in agreement.

"Thanks."

Kathyln now arrived at Lunaris, looking uncertain what to do.

Curtis leaned in closer and whispered in her ear. "Now would be a good time to maybe show him you were concerned and maybe give him a hug."

"I'm happy you're ok," Kathyln replied as Lunaris dusted himself off. She then shot forward and wrapped her arms around him, holding him in a tight embrace as she buried her face in his chest. Lunaris winced a little due to injuries he sustained from the battle, but wasn't about to let her know he was in pain, and returned the hug.

"Now for the current issue," Lunaris said as Kathyln loosened her grip on him. "Who gets the beast core?"

"You or Feyrith can have it," Curtis replied.

"In that case it should go to Lunaris," Feyrith stated, still shivering a little from being nearly frozen. "He seemed to be of more use than I was."

"Thank you," Lunaris replied, accepting the beast core graciously.

"Good, and with Feyfey's logic, I don't need to feel bad about taking this," Curtis replied as he pulled out an egg that was the size of his fist. The egg was nearly transparent and looked like it was made of ice. If not for the sight of something moving in it, it could have easily been passed over as a piece of ice or glass.

"Is that an Ice Falcon egg?" Karen gasped.

"Yup, and I know exactly what to do with it," Curtis replied, and walked over to Kathyln. "For you dear sister. I feel that it would be good for you to have a bond to keep you company."

Kathyln reached out and took the egg with a looked of wondrous curiosity on her face. "Thank you."

"Actually Kathyln, you'd probably be the best person to take care of it," Claire chimed in.

"Why is that?" Kathyln asked.

"Unlike normal beasts that hatch from eggs, the Ice Falcon needs cold to be able to hatch. Then after it hatches it can't regulate its own temperature, so it relies on its parents to keep it cold for its first month or two," Claire explained.

"Yeah, the only other person here who could have been able to take care of it would have been...." Elijah started before realizing he had forgotten about Arthur and Tess. "Please tell me I'm not the only one who forgot about Arthur and Tess."

No one answered, they might have slipped their minds, but none of them were going to admit it. Sylvie then slapped him in the face, jumped over his shoulder, and started running towards the exit. Everyone but Curtis and Lilia started running after her, as they went to tend to Grawders injuries from the fight with the boss.

As they followed Sylvie they thought the small dragon was going to lead them through the dungeon to them. So they were very surprised when they saw Sylvie turn away from the exit and stop by a solid wall and look up. As they caught up to Sylvie they followed her gaze to see both Arthur and Tess sitting on a ledge with another tunnel behind them. Arthur and Tess then pushed themselves off the edge, both using wind spells to slow their descent.

"Thank gods you're both ok," Elijah said over dramatically as he ran to them with open arms.

Arthur put his hand out and caught his face stopping him in his tracks, as Sylvie jumped up into Tess' arms.

"You forgot about us? We were only gone for two days," Arthur said, acting hurt.

"I can't believe you all, I thought we were friends," Tess added with the same over dramatic tone.

"Well we did have to defeat the boss first," Lunaris stated as beads of sweat ran down his face, as he was still feeling drained from using his beast will.

"Oh, Tess and I saw that battle. The two of us could have handled that thing now problem," Arthur stated.

"Then ran a whole marathon after, without using mana," Tess added.

Everyone found this a little humorous. If it wasn't for the over dramatic tones Arthur and Tess were using, one might have thought they were genuinely upset.

"Seriously, we could have been hurt or in real danger. And here you all are celebrating your victory," Arthur said as he put an arm around Tess and pulled her close.

"Oh Kathyln, congratulations on getting a bond," Tess said with a genuine smile to show she was serious.

"Come on Tess, let's go see if Curtis and Lilia need help with Grawder. At least they have a valid excuse not to be searching for us," Arthur said, acting hurt. He then lead Tess past everyone towards Grawder.

Everyone else just watched them walk by. They had to admit their acting hurt was pretty good, but there was something else that really got their attention.

"Is it me, or did they seem to be closer than usual?" Claire asked as she watched them walk away from them.

—————————————————————

"Hoooo, was it always so warm out here?" Lilia asked as she removed her cloak.

It only took three days for them to exit the dungeon, partly because they already beat all the real challenging beasts, partly because the temperatures in the dungeon started climbing a lot faster. The group agreed that the Ice Falcon must have been what was making the dungeon so cold, and that in time the temperatures in the dungeon would become a lot closer to that of a normal Dungeon.

"So I guess this is where we part ways," Lunaris said, as he knew he had to start heading back south, and report back to Curtis and Kathyln's mother.

"Are you sure? Could you not stay with us for the remainder of our journey?" Kathyln asked, sounding a little disappointed.

"I'm afraid so. The journey back will take too long, and we won't make it back in time for the beginning of our next school year if we stay," Lunaris replied with the same sad tone. He then took one of Kathyln's hands and kissed the back of it. "This time I have spent with you has been a true joy, and I will miss you Kathyln."

"I will, miss you too," Kathyln replied, being a little hesitant as she rarely showed any emotion or allowed anyone to get as close to her heart as Lunaris did.

Lunaris smiled knowing she would miss him as well. "Then may I ask a favor?" Kathyln nodded. "May I write to you?" Lunaris asked nervously.

"You may," Kathyln replied, a slight blush appearing on her face.

With that Lunaris and the rest of his party said their goodbyes and began heading south. Elijah then began disarming his mana traps, as most of the others prepared to load into the wagons.

"Curtis, Feyrith, can I have a word with you two?" Arthur asked, with an unusual tone for Arthur.

They both walked over and followed Arthur a little further away from the rest of the group. They could tell this was serious, partly because Arthur called Feyrith by his name, and not Feyfey. Also by his tone that sounded nervous and concerned, showing something was weighing heavily on Arthur's mind.

"So what's wrong?" Curtis asked, wondering what was so wrong that he needed both he and Feyrith.

"I need both of your help."