Oi. People think Dragonstone be tough to forge, but Dragon Scales are much worse. Very few fires exist that can make a scale malleable, and ye gotta control it perfectly, or ye’ll shatter it. However, I don’t recommend ye ever try it, not ‘less ya wanna die.

~Goibniu, The God of the Forge and Brew

They hadn’t even made it halfway to the other island before the sun dropped out of sight. Crow was worried about the time limit of three days. Then again, they wasted a good portion of this day just waiting and then running around and acting like pirates.

Scree! Screeeee!

The horrible sounds penetrated their ears, and soon even the screeching couldn’t drown out the screaming contenders. Crow and the others looked back and could only see silhouettes of the flying creatures against the stars. It was impossible—

*Wyverns.* Nin said. *They won’t fly out over open water like this, especially not to attack near the surface. During the nighttime, some strange beasts surface here. You are all too puny to be worth a meal, so they’ll ignore you. However, anyone on any island… wyvern food.*

*What is up with this trial?*

*Based on what I saw, you’ve figured it out already. I won’t ruin the finale. You personally wouldn’t survive it, but with your allies, it shouldn’t be a problem. Is the dark-haired one my rival?* Nin asked, and Crow felt his body stiffen.

*They both are, maybe.* Crow decided not to lie.

*I admit they are interesting. This pirate thing… is very entertaining. Why don’t these weaklings fight back?*

*Fear. Mara has a reputation. Plus, Otto is a one-man army. It’s hard to say which they fear more.*

Nin laughed at the situation and then backed out of his consciousness, only to have Lily replace her.

*Crow, you need to leave the trial after you pass this one.*

*Huh? Why?*

*You’ve made a serious miscalculation. Remember the screens? You are unfated, so your screen is most likely empty. If they haven’t noticed by now, they’ll definitely notice that your allies have disappeared too. All your pirating will not go unnoticed.*

“Fuck,” Crow muttered under his breath, but on the quiet waters, the entire boat heard him.

*I should eliminate myself now. Why wait?*

*Nin says to get your reward first.*

*Thanks, Lily. I understand.*

“What is wrong?” Mara asked from beside him.

“I made a mistake…” Crow hesitated before explaining it to them. If these weren’t his trusted allies, then no one counted in that aspect.

“You are right. We can’t stay.” Mara said.

“We?”

“You dumb ass, you think you can remain sitting there in the crowd like nothing happened. The moment we exit the trial, we’ll need to go directly to Mugna. No… he is probably already waiting for us to exit and has notified your master.” Mara explained. “Further…” She looked over at Song Xue and Otto. “You have these two days to tell them goodbye.”

“Otto fine. No cry, li’l sister.”

“Damn you, you big oaf! Who is your sister?” Crow growled.

“Don’t say goodbye,” Song Xue said softly. “It is enough to know you won’t abandon me. You’ve always protected me. No matter what happens, I can’t just ignore that. You are the person I trust the most.”

Mara nudged Crow since he was sitting beside her on the front-most bench. Otto took the backbench exclusively, and Song Xue sat in the middle. So Crow followed Mara’s lead and moved to sit beside Song Xue. He put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her close. The sea was cold at night, and he felt her shivering while being held.

“Otto, rest,” Mara said. “We shouldn’t get any closer to that island until those beasts disappear.”

“Those are wyverns,” Crow said. “The dragon variant for this stage.”

“How can you know that?”

“Murals. Those creatures depicted in them were wyverns.” Crow didn’t lie, but he almost slipped up.

They took turns on watch while the others tried to sleep. With the choppy waves and Otto occasionally paddling to get them back into position near the second island, sleep was tough. Song Xue had easily passed out. Her face leaned against Crow’s chest, and he absently wiped a little drool off her lips.

By the time the wyverns finished, the skies had already lightened. Otto rowed toward the shore, wanting to get off the boat and stretch his stiff body. After the others disembarked, Crow stowed the boat again. This time, they didn’t find any ready-made trail, and as small as the island was, Crow felt it was unnecessary, anyway. None of them let their guard down, but Crow felt the wyverns eliminated any threat.

It only took an hour to reach the temple. The tropical forest was fairly thin, but there were large boulders to contend with. There were no contenders around, but Crow knew that was just because they landed on the island as the last wyvern disappeared below the surface of the sea. In other words, they arrived early.

“We all go up this time,” Mara stated. Crow didn’t mind, but mainly because they could scale the stairs faster than him. It left him feeling helpless, but he trudged up after them without complaint. Reaching the top, he climbed on top of the pagoda again and scanned the area.

“Done?” Mara asked after he climbed off the roof.

“Yup, next island.”

“Don’t worry. I did some calculations from the top. The next island is even closer than the last, and I can see the top of the temple on the fourth island. They are getting closer and closer together. We have time so we can check over the islands a little before leaving, and we should get to the fifth island by late afternoon.” Mara explained. Crow noticed the closeness but still worried about wasting time. Either way, they spent the next fifteen minutes checking over the island. Sadly, they came away with only a few herbs that looked sickly.

“Trash,” Song Xue said and tossed them. Crow had read several books on various medicinal plants and had to agree with her. They weren’t even worth the effort of bringing back.

While they were in the boat, Crow spent time with his charcoal and scraps of paper before he had a final copy of the rune. Handing it over to Song Xue and Mara to look, Xue’er spun it a few times until she held it up before Crow.

“This is the symbol for… Life? Plants?”

“Wood?” Mara asked.

“Oh, maybe. If we assume these temples are using the runes of the five core elements, then there should only be five islands?” Song Xue asked.

“Six temples. So probably.” Crow said.

“Six? How do you know that?”

“The pagodas, each had a line of text etched into them. I said nothing about the first one because I wasn’t sure. It was the Temple of Midnight, and the last one was the Temple of the Vanquished Sun. If I’m not mistaken, they borrowed the names from the Six Phases of the Moon’s Rise and Fall. The other four should be Night, Twilight, Evening, and False Dawn, or to be more accurate, Temple of the Deepening Shadow, Temple of the Mixed Light, Temple of the Hazy Moon, and Temple of the False Dawn.”

“Holy crap, I remember that book,” Mara said. “Temples of the Sun and Moon from the Triskelion Archives, right?”

“Yes.” Crow hesitated to say more and kept quiet. The book was very obscure, but if these were the temples mentioned, then this was not a realm created by Dragons. It was the fragment of a primordial world. Which only would confuse the situation even more. For example, Crow couldn’t stop thinking about the Arena and how something like that could connect to a fragmented primordial world. Unless the Arena existed while the primordial world was still whole. If that was true, then it indeed was a mysterious place.

They rushed to the next island after that conversation, and Crow quickly memorized the rune. Which turned out to be metal. It was on the fourth island that things got weird.

“Stop!” A man appeared from behind a tree. He wore a loincloth made of leaves and nothing else. However, he wielded a crude spear. “Captain Under says he is the Pirate King and that anyone that comes to his island must pay a tithe.”

“…” Crow stared at the man, unable to comprehend what he’d just heard.

“What tithe…?” Mara asked.

“Well… normally it’d be your undergarments, but since you are fully clothed… I’m not sure?”

Crow had stashed the clothes of their victims in his ring instead of the Vortex Pin. It was on a whim, but now he couldn’t help but grin.

“Here,” he said, handing over a dress. “That is ten times more fabric than our underclothes.”

“Humm…” The man was lost in thought and then slowly nodded. “Okay, this is an acceptable tithe. Go on, minions. Don’t forget to show kowtow to the Captain when you reach the top of the temple.”

After they left the man behind, they all had weird looks on their faces. Finally, Mara couldn’t take it.

“That son of a bitch! He dares look down on Pirate Mommy!” Mara roared and charged toward the temple. Crow looked at Otto, who just shrugged and started chasing after her. Song Xue had almost already caught up to Mara, so Crow could only rush forward.

When he arrived at the temple, several people were tumbling down the thousand stairs, and the loud cracks and screams made everyone present wince. Out of the half-dozen people that were flung down, four were almost immediately turned into mist. The other two made it almost to the bottom before they finally died.

Crow had stopped at the foot of the stairs, and a man came up beside him, eating a banana. He looked over and saw the guard that stopped them earlier, and he was wearing the dress Crow gave him. Crow sighed and just shook his head.

“LISTEN UP!” Mara roared from the top of the temple. “There is only one pirate king, and that is Pirate Mommy. My crew will destroy the bastards that claim to be pirates without my permission.”

All of Captain Under’s loyal stooges fled the moment they saw Mara charging up the stairs. None of them even glanced at Crow and the man in the dress as they fled the island. Regardless, he had his bow out with an arrow nocked, just in case they decided to target him as he climbed the stairs. Reaching the top, Crow did his thing and didn’t even comment about Mara’s strange loss of temper. He didn’t even try to understand and just guided them to the next island.

“Stone,” Song Xue said upon seeing Crow’s drawing.

The fifth island was also uneventful, and as they suspected, it was a Water Rune. The sun was almost setting by this point, and they all prepared for another sleepless night. However, approaching the sixth island, they knew this was the last one. First, it wasn’t even an island, but a massive set of stairs built into the side of a mountain—or not. Smoke or mist hid all but the bottom two hundred stairs. It was hard to tell if it was a mountain or not, but they could all feel the steady increase in temperature as they approached.

“Volcano,” Otto said, surprising everyone.

Crow was positive that Otto was right, and this was part of a mainland, not an island. Which meant the top of this volcano would lead to the next test, which was fire.

*Nin, why is metal last? I thought dragons were like the gods of fire.*

*We are, but we put more value on our scales than our fire. Only ores and gemstones can harden our scales and give them a unique… plumage? Coloring? Dragons may appear to have similar colors, but there has never been a dragon with the same colored scales or patterns. So we are very selective about our diet.*

*Is it like my heritage?* Crow suddenly asked, inspired by a stray thought.

*The patterns could be considered that. My scales have part of my lineage in them.*

In a nutshell, Crow felt dragons might be more vain than humans.

“Sleep, if you can. We’ll finish up in the morning,” Mara told them.

As the moon rose, Crow looked out across the sea and saw many boats drifting like they were. Hearing all the screeching, no one said or did anything. There barely any talking as they didn’t want to draw the attention of the wyverns. Overall, other than the screeching, it was a peaceful night.