"Well, if that is what you wish, O seer," said Mercer as he started to jump lightly up and down, getting the blood flowing.

Mason stood beside his younger brother and began to unclasp his scabbard from his belt.

"What are you doing?" said Li. "Use your weapons. Elsewise I will hear excuses about not being able to use your full strength."

"But-," said Mason as he looked down at Tia, the dragonling barely even reaching past his knees.

"Just do it," said Li. "Or you'll make her even more annoyed than she is."

"That's right," said Tia as she crossed her arms, haughty expression on her face as she leered at the two brothers.

"She's a dragon, brother," said Mercer as he unsheathed his choice of weaponry: two daggers. Basic steel daggers and quite old, it seemed, with how worn and discolored with sweat the leather handles were. "And trained under the guiding hand of the divine seer no less."

"You are right," said Mason as he unsheathed his longsword, grasping it in both hands. He took a battle stance, his feet evenly apart and his posture slightly lowered to match Tia's height.

They had good builds, to be sure. Lean and athletic, more oriented towards moving quickly than overpowering things with brute force. No doubt a product of their environments – it did not do well for street rats making a living by sneaking and slinking to be lumbering hunks of muscle. Explained their relatively high agility stats too.

"Papa, can I go all out?" asked Tia as she fidgeted, eager to show off her strength. Her eyes of green and black were afire with mystic light, and the nubs of her wings were beginning to poke through the back of her long tunic.

"Stay in your current form, Tia," said Li. "You will have plenty of opportunity to loose your strength later, when we start our journey."

It would not do for Tia to suddenly transform into a massive dragonling, despite how much she wanted to show off her strength. It would spook the brothers far too much, and he wanted to teach them a lesson.

A lesson that he did not intend to be harmful to them physically.

Well, that was his intention. He had little idea how much Tia herself would or could hold back. But Li could always heal any dismembered limbs or shattered bones, so there was that.

"Okay, papa," said Tia with a little sigh. The light around her eyes dimmed, and her wings sunk back into her form. She smiled at the brothers and held out her arms as if hugging the open air. "So, when we start fight?"

The brothers looked at Li, and he shrugged. "Whenever you two want."

Mason looked to Tia with extreme caution, sensing that something was definitely off here. It was evident that the boy was caught in an indecision where he wanted to take a step forward but felt it wrong to do so against a child while also feeling from gut instinct that if he did, he would be severely hurt.

Very conflicting feelings, those, so it was understandable why he just stood there.

Mercer, on the other hand-

"Victory comes to those who seize initiative!" he shouted, dashing forwards with low posture as he twirled his daggers mid-air, repositioning them so that their blades faced downwards.

Halfway to Tia, Mercer's form disappeared as if swallowed by a sudden burst of shadow. He emerged directly behind Tia, daggers ready to strike. Looks like he had used a skill called [Shadowstep] to close some distance while entering temporary stealth.

A basic Assassin skill, perhaps one of the first ones learned.

Tia's lengthy ears twitched, and she cocked her head curiously. Her tail lashed out from behind her like a prehensile whip, crashing into Mercer's chest with an audible impact. The boy hurtled backwards, flipping twice or thrice before he landed flat on his back, eyes wide open and coughing from having the air knocked out his lungs.

"Wow!" said Tia as she turned to Mercer. She pranced up to him, standing over him with her hands behind her back, and gave him a beaming smile. "You disappear! Like sister Sylvie!"

Her smile faded into an almost worried look. "But… you are slow. Too slow. Not healthy, maybe?"

"Good distraction, brother!" shouted Mason as he charged forwards, finally putting his indecision to rest. His longsword was held at waist-level, ready to swipe at Tia or cut downwards.

Li did have to give it to the brothers. Their teamwork was actually quite good. Even now, as Tia distracted herself looking at Mason charging at her, Mercer had used an Assassin skill called [Saving Throw] that healed up a portion of the damage taken from a recent blow and granted a burst of speed, and he used it to take a silent step back, fading into stealth again.

Mason's seemingly idiotic decision to shout out and declare his surprise attack was, in fact, a secondary diversion for Mercer to inflict another, more damaging strike with another Assassin class skill, most likely.

Tia grabbed Mason's blade in her hands.

Dark green scales emerged around her usually pale hands, shielding her from the blow and more. The hardness of the scales was such that the blade actually chipped and cracked from striking them, and Mason set his jaw as he no doubt felt a jarring impact riding up his arm and through his body like he had swung full force at a brick wall without bracing himself.

Tia inspected the blade in her hands with a light tilt of her head. "Metal stick, but too soft." She looked up at Mason in concern. "How do you use this? Too weak to use. Sister Jeanne says using weak stick not safe. Look!"

She opened her mouth wide, rows of serrated and bladed teeth visible, and chomped down on the metal. With a quick tearing motion, she completely ripped apart a full half of the longsword, the flexibly forged metal warped like putty as it jutted from her jaw.

"See-," said Tia as she started to chew. The length of the sword quickly disappeared into her hungry jaws. "Ish bery weak."

"Tia! You don't know where that thing's been," said Li. "Come now, spit it out."

Tia nodded and spat out a crumpled ball of metal the size of a marble – all that remained of the longsword. "Not very tasty anyway."

She looked to Li with a slight frown. "Papa, this is boring."

Mason took several steps back, looking from his destroyed blade to Tia, blinking, as if trying to process what was happening. But Mercer was not daunted. He materialized from above Tia, his daggers bared and wreathed in grey streaks, empowered by [Sinister Strike] which granted an agility modifier to his next attack, doubling the modifier's damage if struck with stealth.

Tia's ears twitched, and as she looked up her eyes widened in surprise. She had deemed Mercer so weak that when he disappeared, she literally forgot about his existence. She opened her mouth instinctively, the surprise numbing her rational thinking to hold back, and a bright patch of light started to glow from her throat.

Li knew this would end up horribly, so he kicked in his superhuman senses and speed. He waved his hand, causing roots to burst from around Tia and grab Mercer before tossing him rather unceremoniously away. Better a few bruises from a hard landing than complete disintegration that not even conventional resurrection could deal with.

The air around the shrine almost seemed to thin, and every conventional living being felt their breathing stop for a single moment as a colossal amount of magical energy suddenly poured out from Tia using her draconic breath.

Then, everything turned bright white as a pillar of flame cascaded out from Tia. The flame seemed to be infused with both shadow and light, as if twin serpents of darkness and light had intertwined in a coiled dance of raging fire. The pillar soared up higher and higher, far past the treeline until it seemed to nearly touch the clouds before erupting into a star-shaped explosion, one half light, the other half dark.

The draconic breath quickly faded away following the explosion, leaving night to spread its shadows over the shrine again, and Tia quickly covered her mouth with her hands and turned to Li with sorry eyes.

"Sorry, papa," she said. "I know you don't like me using breath. But was surprised."

Li walked up to Tia and scooped her up in his arms. "It's okay, Tia. You were just surprised, that's all. Papa won't scold you over small mistakes like that."

"Thanks, papa," said Tia as she hugged Li. "For understanding."

"By all that is right and green," said Ivo as he stared upwards at where the explosion had been. It occurred to Li that the priest had never before seen Tia use anything remotely close to her full power, and, curiously, her draconic breath was several levels even above what she was supposed to be able to output. "Whatever demon faces that will be but ash."

All the beastwomen, too, stared at the remnants of the explosion in awe. Only Iona was unimpressed, her attention instead spent on gently motioning with her hands, healing the canopy leaves on trees around the shrine's edge that had been close enough to burn away from the breath.

Tia yawned loudly, nestling her chin on Li's shoulder. She was tired out from using her breath, though she was far better at handling its energy expenditure than before.

Li turned to the two brothers and found them both lying flat on the ground, hands on their heads like they were readying themselves to survive an earthquake.