"Why are we walking along the shore?" Evala asked after several long minutes of silence.

"To find out what these statues are," Nathan answered. "Did you notice it when we passed?"

"Uh… no?" She answered.

"Let's go back," Keith suggested. "It wasn't that far."

Nathan nodded, then the two teens from Earth led the catkin back around a dozen yards, before gesturing to the ocean.

"We're at low tide right now," Keith said. "According to my familiar. That makes it easier to see. Do you see it now?"

"Low tide?" Evala asked, before looking at the ocean.

A few moments of searching, and she noticed it. What looked like some sort of platform made of dark gray stone. It was ten feet in diameter, and the players from Earth had noticed two previous ones.

"It's the third one," Keith told her. "That we've passed by. Nathan's probably trying to find the statues that go on them. Or at least, one of them."

"We've come across three of them?" Evala asked.

"Yeah," Keith nodded. "They were spaced a hundred yards apart. I'm not sure how to translate that into your distances. Twenty yards is five ilkan, I believe Ichtvar said. So that would be twenty-five ilkan, I think? Unless my math is wrong."

"Doubtful," Nathan commented.

"Yeah," Keith nodded. "Unless the ilkan changes over greater distances, it would be twenty-five, I believe."

"It is consistent," Evala told him. "They are that far apart?"

"Whatever they are," Keith gestured to the platform. "They're either very large, or have large standing spots."

"What I want to know," Nathan muttered. "Is where they went."

"Yeah," Keith scratched the back of his head. "I'm kind of wondering that, too. If the statues are large enough to require such big, sturdy stands… what the hell moved them?"

"Maybe they moved themselves?" Nathan asked.

"Please, please, please," Keith glared at him. "Don't ever suggest that again, because the universe will see it as a challenge."

"I've told you before," Ichtvar piped up. "That's not-"

"-how it works, yeah," Keith rolled his eyes. "But you can't say in all honesty that sometimes, things happen to be exactly the oddity someone suggested. And if these statues really do move themselves, then we might have an issue getting them back in place."

Keith let out a shiver, and Nathan gave him a sympathetic look. The somber, despondent feeling was familiar to them, though the mage was having a hard time placing where he had felt it before.

"I thought," Evala said, her tail and ears still perked up, her tail's fur still on end. "Ichtvar said it was almost impossible for you to feel nervous or uncomfortable due to the forged aspect of your soul?"

"That's Nathan," Keith told her. "And being fearless and being able to sense death and despair are two different things. There are a lot of phantoms and shades on this island, as evidenced by the Dungeon requiring us to kill a lot of them."

"This is an island of the dead," Nathan said quietly, and the other two looked at him.

They both knew that the wind elemental was still there, as it had been ruffling Nathan's shirt and tie as it kept protectively close to him. That meant that his range of awareness was limited to the same as theirs.

"What makes you think that?" Evala asked.

"He's right," Ichtvar told them. "This feeling, this depressing atmosphere that is more than what the darkness of this world makes… either a great tragedy occurred here, a lot of dead are buried here, or both."

Keith looked around, then back to Nathan as he finally realized where he'd felt such a thing before.

"The school," Keith said, and Nathan nodded. "It felt like this when we passed by the school. But this is so much more intense."

"Yeah," Nathan nodded. "Much, much more intense. Let's get moving. I want to find one of these statues."

The trio began walking again, and after nearly an hour of it, Nathan and Keith both stopped and groaned.

"What?" Evala asked. "I know the tide's been coming up, it's made me a bit uncomfortable with needing to go out to the-"

"That," Nathan and Keith pointed out to sea.

Just inside the range of their light, they could see it. A statue that was partially in the water.

Nathan had Ichtvar exit his pack and take the lantern as he and Keith sent their familiars to bat the ocean aside, clearing the space around the statue as they both began to strip naked to avoid soaking their clothes and getting them dirty with the sediment on the seabed.

"You two are going in the water?" Evala asked.

Rather than answering, the two naked men began walking into the water, ignoring its chill as they approached the statue, which the elements were focusing on keeping clear of water. The phoenix himself joined them, hovering above the quartet to give them light, leaving Evala at the edges of it. The catkin, rather than helping, summoned an orb of light to push the darkness away from her. She would prefer to use the mage's staff for holy light since he left it behind, but knew that the System might register that as stealing.

"Jeez, this thing is big," Keith said.

"Yeah," Nathan nodded, kneeling down in the wet sand, brushing at the edge of the statue, where it had sunk beneath the surface.

The statue itself was made of the same dark gray stone as the stands for them, and would take up a little more than half of its space in the seated position it held. The parts they could see were the head and most of its torso.

Shaped like a lion with ram's horns on its head and a pair of wings tucked against its back, the beast statue sat in the seabed in an actual sitting position, carved in a way like a cat or dog would sit.

"There's no good way to lift this," Nathan shook his head. "I won't be able to get purchase on this sand. Wind?"

"I can alleviate some of its weight with my wind," Keith nodded. "I've never tried lifted something so heavy before, though."

"Force?" Nathan asked hopefully.

"No," Keith shook his head. "I don't know the proper force spell for this. Would you be willing to put more Points into-"

"That's not the issue," Nathan shook his head. "I could probably lift it by myself if it weren't so large. Weight is only a part of the factor. Size affects it as well. Then there's the fact that we're standing on at least six inches of sand and it's sunk probably a foot or more into the ground. All of that makes it more difficult. I won't be able to get purchase on the ground, my feet will just keep slipping and shifting under the weight."

"What should we do?" Keith asked.

"If a certain catkin wasn't terrified of drowning," Nathan gave Evala a pointed glare. "We could get her over here to help us. Though we'd still have the issue of purchase and it being sunk into the ground."

"So?" Keith asked.

"Stay here," Nathan told him, then went back to shore and began digging through his backpack.

"I can't help it," Evala told him. "Especially after having to do that Trial where we-"

"Shut it," Nathan glared at her before finding what he was looking for.

He pulled out two of the cards from the deck he'd located, then activated them and pulled out the pair of shovels he'd stored within. With the shovels out, Nathan returned to Keith, handing one to his comrade.

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The pair began digging, careful not to bump the statue with their shovels. They were confident they wouldn't damage it, but neither wanted to take that risk.

As soon as they cleared a full foot around the statue, save for an inch or two directly against it, Keith used his wind magic to push the remaining sand and sediment away. The statue was sunk a little more than a foot and a half down, but they'd cleared out enough that it wouldn't be an issue.

With that settled, they began to sort out the logistics of actually moving the statue. Even if they'd cleaned out a small section, they still had to walk eight feet to the platform it was supposed to go onto.

In the end, the familiars came up with a plan without conversing with their contractors. Since Nathan and Keith couldn't come up with something viable, they decided to go with it.

"Are you sure you can handle that?" Nathan asked the mage. "You know it's not within my abilities."

"Yeah," Keith nodded, then a barrier began to form around the two of them and the statue.

It expanded out, and the elementals soared up to avoid being touched by it. The barrier itself gently scraped across the seabed as it held the water at bay, then the two elementals moved to the statue, doing their best to lift it as Nathan stabbed one shovel into the seabed and threw the other to shore.

As they were creatures of pure elements, even they had their limits for what they could do, but by digging underneath the statue, the pair of them were able to begin to lift it up, keeping hold of its feet and the tail wrapped around them as Nathan placed a hand on the wobbling statue to help stabilize it. Ichtvar, as he had been, continued to hold the lantern.

The quintent moved slowly, Keith doing his best to slowly allow the water back in by decreasing the height of his barrier. It would hinder him and Nathan walking, but also free him up to help with the statue.

As soon as he felt comfortable with the water level, Keith released his barriers, allowing the last foot or so to fill back in suddenly. The elementals had lifted the statue above the surface already, so as soon as his barrier ended, Keith joined Nathan in helping stabilize it as they moved, using a barrier on his side.

Due to the weight of the statue, the sandy ground beneath them, and the water they were walking through, it took them several minutes to reach the stone stand for the statue, which they slide onto it…

Only to jump back as it came to life the moment it was fully on. Keith backpedaled as fast as he could in the water as Nathan took a fighting stance, the elementals each becoming a spear in form.

The beast stretched for a moment, then circled around its stand before resuming its seated position directly in the center of it, its wings stretched out to the sides as it looked out to sea, becoming still once more.

"At least we know we don't have to put them exactly in the center," Nathan commented, and Keith snorted.

"Of course your mind went there," Keith said.

"It's true, though," Nathan gestured to the statue. "And at least we know that they'll do this again. And why they aren't on their pedestals."

"You think they walked themselves off?" Keith asked.

Nathan looked out to sea, then walked over to where they had found the statue.

"Breezy, Splashy," he said. "Push the water aside."

They obeyed, Ichtvar hovering above to give them light with the lantern, and Nathan had Keith switch to his barrier for more consistency. As soon as the space was clear, Nathan grabbed the shovel he'd left behind and moved to the edge of the excavated area furthest to sea and knelt down.

"Hm," he shook his head and threw the shovel back to shore, then focused, drawing on the Mana within him.

Carefully, Nathan used force magic to move the sand and sediment that had washed back into that edge, carefully looking for what he'd noticed when the statue was lifted up. Finding it, he began to clear the area around it, making sure to not damage it with his force magic as he wished he had a small brush.

Keith continued to increase the diameter and height of his barrier to push the water away more as Nathan continued to excavate his evidence. By the time he finished, it took both Ichtvar's flames, Breezy holding the lantern, and the heavenly storm elemental to illuminate the full sixty-foot length of the thing that had been in front of the statue.

The skeleton of a long, serpent-like creature that had looped around several times. If Keith had to guess, it was over three hundred feet in actual length, with a pair of legs every five feet past the pair of heads.

Nathan had spotted the tip of its skull when the statue had moved, before sediment covered it again when the water filled back in.

In several places, bones were cracked, but other than that, it was mostly intact.

"The statue," Keith said. "Killed this?"

"Possibly," Nathan nodded. "There were probably others that fought it, too, then wandered off to fight other threats while this one went inactive. Or once it was weakened enough, they wandered off to deal with other threats, and this one either won just in time to go inactive, or went inactive, but the beast was already doomed."

"What is it?" Evala called out as Nathan and Keith began to walk back along its length.

"Come out here and find out!" Nathan called back with an irritated glare.

"I can't exactly hold this barrier up much longer," Keith told him. "I know you worked quickly, and had a little help from the familiars, but I'm drained mentally and almost completely with mana."

"She's actually braving the water," Nathan commented, and Keith looked over to find Evala tentatively walking over to them. "Just a few more minutes."

"Oh, my gods," Evala gasped when she saw the beast. "Is this-"

"A monster?" Keith asked. "Yes. Not sure what, exactly, since it's got, well, legs. Ichtvar said sea serpents don't."

The familiars pulled back in close, and Keith released his barrier, warning the others to prepare for the waves to crash against them. Evala created a barrier on one side of them to help decrease the pressure, then the group returned to the beach.

"Now that we're done digging up bones," Evala said as Nathan crouched down, opening up the oysters he'd collected as they worked, held by his wind elemental for safekeeping. "And… whatever those are, can we get to working on the quests? I'd rather not be here any longer than necessary, this place gives me the creeps."

"No," Keith said. "We need to warm up, first. Nathan, did you just break that open?"

"It's already dead," the warrior commented as he pulled out the green pearl. "Look, pearls."

"You know we can't take them out of the game with us," Keith said.

"I know," Nathan responded. "I want to see if we can take them between Challenges. Do you know, Evala?"

"I don't know," she answered. "I've never tried taking stuff from Dungeons out of them before, that would be ridiculous."

Nathan shrugged, then continued pulling out the pearls as Ichtvar taught Keith how to create a magical flame that would continue to burn until the mana poured into its creation ran out.

"That way," Ichtvar told him. "You don't have to keep using the wood you and Nathan put into the cards. I'm not sure how much he did, but this will probably help."

"It does," Keith nodded. "And it'll help us warm back up faster, too."

"Want to know what else will?" Nathan asked as Keith set the flame to burning with most of what mana he had.

"I'm guessing sex?" Keith asked. "You know that it's somewhat disrespectful to have sex on an island that's probably a graveyard, right?"

"Beaches are fair game," Nathan set out a blanket. "The beach isn't a graveyard, so it's safe."

Evala opened her mouth, but whatever she intended on saying, neither of the men found out, as Nathan grabbed her and pushed her onto all fours on the blanket, his hands quickly groping her breasts and massaging them as he rubbed his erection against her ass.

The catkin moaned in pleasure, and Nathan slid his hands from her breasts down her torso, using one to finger her and the other to play with her tail, wrapping it around his waist before pushing himself into her.

"Oooh!" Evala moaned, only vaguely aware of something else penetrating her ass as the other demigod's hands moved back to her breasts. "More-unnh-eek!"

Evala squealed as Nathan pinched her nipples while simultaneously ramming in as hard as he could, before returning to his previous rhythm, and Keith turned his back to them while asking the wind elemental to cover his ears so he couldn't hear it as he warmed up.

When he sensed the catkin drawing close to her orgasm, Nathan quickly pulled out, and Evala felt whatever he had put in her ass pull out with the movement as well. She barely had a moment to realize that he had shoved her tail in there before Nathan flipped her onto her back and knelt over her.

"Nathan-" she moaned, cutting off as his mouth met her right nipple. "Unnh!"

Nathan drank her nectar, sucking until no more came out, then switched to her other breast and did the same. Finished, Nathan pushed himself back into her, and Evala wrapped her legs around his back as he pressed his body against hers, moving only his hips to thrust in and up, drawing out even greater moans of pleasures from the catkin.

Evala climaxed, arching her back and pressing against him even more, then her legs went slack and slid off of Nathan as he continued to thrust into her. His speed picked up, and Nathan lifted his body up a little, his breathing quickening as Evala began to grunt from the force of his thrusts. When he finally climaxed, Nathan pulled off of Evala and lay next to her on the blanket, closing his eyes.

Moments later, he seemed to be asleep to the catkin, who rested for a few minutes as she basked in the feeling. Her Endurance was high enough that he hadn't hurt her, and he hadn't worked her like he had back at the Trial, so she wasn't as sore. When she thought about the three times they had sex, though, one thing stood out to her in each.

"Keith," Evala said, and the human mage gave her a glance, before quickly looking away.

"Nathan didn't seem to actually enjoy that," she said.

"What do you mean?" Keith asked.

"He doesn't grunt or moan very much," she said. "And his face is always pretty neutral, or he just has an intense look of concentration or focus. And he won't meet my gaze, either."

"Oh, trust me," Keith snorted. "Nathan was enjoying it. Honestly? He was probably picturing you as his girlfriend. Nathan isn't that noisy, if you hadn't noticed, though I think he might get so with his girlfriend at times? I'm not sure. As for averting his gaze, you aren't his girlfriend, and he probably considers meeting gazes for too long during sex to be something between more intimate people. With people who have a deeper relationship than you two."

"How can you tell he was enjoying it?" She asked.

"He let you climax first."

"What do you mean?" She asked. "He just takes awhile to-"

"Uh, no," Keith snorted. "Nathan chooses when he climaxes, though the more he delays, the worse the need to gets. The way you were moaning and shifting around, I could tell without looking that you'd climaxed. Unless your moans get even louder and you squirm around for half a minute just normally at a random point almost forty minutes in."

Keith wasn't going to mention that his psychic powers had grown enough for him to develop empathy, which let him sense the mental state of those around him. He could tell when they each orgasmed because he hadn't figured out how to shut off that passive ability yet.

"I don't think people choose when they climax."

"Oh, Nathan can," Ichtvar stuck his head out of the backpack. "His dad's a sex god, and that gives him certain advantages, like being able to choose when he climaxes during sex, bigger loads, a bigger toy, the ability to sense someone else's sexual state, the ability to delay his partner's orgasm, the ability to guarantee or prevent pregnancy, and more."

"Hey, Ichtvar," Keith looked at the phoenix. "If you knew this, then why didn't you tell him so he could learn how to prevent pregnancies with that trait of his so he doesn't have to worry about condoms? You know that's one of the reasons he was holding off on doing something with Katie, even with as low as the odds of a demigod impregnating someone are."

"His sexual frustration was alleviating my boredom."