All three of them were sitting at the table trying to enjoy breakfast when Anthony came into the room, spotted them, and approached in order to give them a greeting. He looked across their faces and saw that Marik and Sara both had tired, haggard faces while Sai was practically glowing with her massive grin even though she also had slight bags under her eyes.

"Good morning. Should I even ask about what happened?"

Both Marik and Sara gave Sai a light glare which she shrugged off in her happy mood and continued eating.

"No," said Sara while continuing to try and wither Sai down with her eyes alone, "I really don't think you want to."

"She's right. You probably don't want to know. Did you need us for something?"

"Oh, no. I was merely giving a morning greeting but it seems that even if I did need your services at the moment, none of you would be able to perform too well."

"Oh, I don't know. I'm pretty sure Sai could handle just about anything at the moment..."

"I see. Well, I'm going to go ahead and go eat my breakfast, then. I hope your morning improves."

"Thank you. I'm sure Sara and I will feel better after we get some sleep."

Anthony walked away and they went back to eating. When they were done both Sara and Marik stood up in an almost synchronized manner and started walking in the direction of their room. Sai happily skipped along behind them. Marik reached the door to their room and opened before stepping aside and making a kind gesture to his sister to let her in first before following right after her. He contemplated slamming the door in Sai's face but realized that might actually end up badly and instead just ignored her as he walked straight towards their bed to flop facedown onto it in the hope that sleep would soon take him.

"I don't really get why both of you are so mad."

"Eight hours, Sai," Sara shouted into her pillow without moving. "You kept us there to watch that for eight hours and then proceeded to test what you learned as soon as we got back for another four. Neither of us has had a chance to sleep since we woke up in that camp and ran to the city. I can't say anything about Marik but I just don't have that kind of energy! I've been forced to watch something I didn't want to and then kicked out of the room my bed is in to walk around town for hours after half a day of running and a week of travel! I want to sleep!"

"Fine. It's not like you can't use that information, though. Once you snag Derek-"

"Sai! Please! Just shut up and let me sleep."

"Okay."

Sai tried to be careful not to make any more noise as she slowly crawled into bed next to Marik. She paused for a while and Marik could feel sleep coming to greet him as she finally started snuggling against him. He used the last of his conscious effort to reach an arm out and wrap it around her as he finally passed out.

Marik woke up and stretched lightly while being careful not to disturb the sleeping beauty next to him. He slowly and gently disentangled his limbs and body from Sai's to get out of bed so he get stretch out the stiffness even better. As his feet touched the floor he noticed that Sara started to stir in the other bed as well. She rolled over a bit and opened her eyes to meet his. Marik put his finger in front of his lips and whispered a light shushing noise before giving a brief glance and point in Sai's direction. Sara blinked a couple times as she looked back and forth between him and Sai then she yawned and slowly sat up.

Neither of them said anything while they moved around to change their clothes and lightly wash up with a wet rag. Once they were done Marik glanced out the window to try and estimate the time and determined that evening wasn't far off. They both moved over to sit on the edge of Sara's bed and look at Sai as she slept. Marik thought she looked absolutely adorable in her sleep and probably could have continued watching for a while without feeling too bored.

"She looks so calm and peaceful right now..."

Sara tried to stay quiet as she made her comment.

"Mm hm. Isn't she just the prettiest most adorable woman in existence?"

"I don't think I'd go that far. She is pretty, though. Should we just let her keep sleeping or wake her up?"

"Honestly, we should probably wake her up but it just seems like such a waste..."

"Well, I don't mind waiting for a little longer. I like her well enough but having a little peace without the constant excitement and energy is nice."

"Mm. I suppose. Then again, it's not like we really have to wake her up, anyways."

"Why not? We can't just let her sleep forever and she'll probably get mad if we just leave her asleep and go do something else."

"While that's all true, it's not really a problem since she's been at least partly awake pretty much since we got up. She's just trying to hold onto sleep since she was actually more tired than she thought she was."

"Wait, she's already awake?"

"She's half awake and half asleep. Right, Sai? If you don't finish waking up now then we're just going to head down to eat dinner without you."

Sai immediately opened her eyes and sat upright. She turned her gaze towards the both of them and got a slightly teary look in her eyes.

"That's mean. I was just letting you have some brother-sister time and you're going to leave me behind! Is it because you're still mad from last night? I'm kind of sorry. I didn't mean to make us stay up that long but it was just so interesting and there were things to learn and I got excited and wanted to try it out before I forgot how to do any of it and-"

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Okay, you can stop there. I'm not mad about that anymore. I still don't think I needed to go there, too, but what I was angry about was mostly not having a place to sleep once it was over."

"You could have slept right there in your bed. I would never kick you out..."

"Sai. When you and my brother get...intimate...you tend to start being loud. Like, really loud. No person alive would be able to sleep while anywhere close by to that."

"Oh. Umm, sorry?"

"You said that already. I got to sleep so I'm okay for now. We probably won't be able to sleep tonight, though, since we only just woke up."

All three of them looked out the window at the slowly darkening sky and sighed. Marik stood up and started heading to the door as his stomach growled. Sai and Sara shrugged at each other and followed him down to the dining area to get something to eat. They all ate in silence and when they were done Marik looked at them and thought out loud.

"I'd still like to go out and try to see if we can find some of the shops I was looking for. I'm not sure what you two want to do, though. We could split up, I guess. As long as you two stay together then it should keep enough people from accosting. Since I don't really thing I want more nighttime excitement like last night I think I'll just hang out in our room once night comes."

"Umm. I don't really mind either way as long as you let me know ahead of time what you're going to do in the room."

"I'd rather go with you. I used most of my money last night, anyways."

"Alright. Let's go before the shops start closing."

They all stood up and Marik decided to just ask a few people if there was a place that sold enchanted items or anything dealing with magic. He got a few answers and rushed to check the places he'd been told about. Only one of them was still open by the time he got there and the old bearkin that was running the store didn't seem to pleased that they had arrived just as he was about to close up. Marik gave a quick apology and started looking around.

The store did in fact have a few books with spells in them but most of the spells seemed lackluster compared to what he was used to. He flipped through a few them as he lightly skimmed them while ignoring the scowl and complaints from the store owner. He noticed a few spells he hadn't seen before and checked the titles of the books again to see that they were all types of beginner books. He smiled a little and stacked them all on the counter before going to look around some more. He grabbed some writing supplies and an extra bag and a few other small things that caught his interest for some things he had in mind like some cheap curse cleaner, some cheap enchanted accessories, and a basic enchanting book.

The old man was still scowling at him but it wasn't as severe and the complaints had stopped. Once Marik had piled everything on the counter he asked for the exact price and hoped he had enough with him to get it all. The man tallied it up using a list and some abacus-like calculator. It ended up costing most of what Marik had brought to the capital with him but he felt happy with what he had bought and started putting it all in the bag he had bought while humming merrily. The girls were still looking at some of the various odds and ends around the shop when Marik announced that he was done and heading back. They both looked at him as he nearly pranced past them while still humming a happy tune and smiled at him wryly.

Once they were back in their room at the inn the girls watched as he pulled out all the things he had bought. It looked like they wanted to ask some questions but Marik mostly ignored them as he sorted through everything. After setting everything on the floor in an organized way that he could understand he started flipping through the magic beginner books again. Once he found one that seemed to have similar instructions to the way he had been taught he called the girls over.

"Here you go, Sara. You can use this. Do you want to watch me or try and help her, Sai? Or do you have something else you want to do?"

"I can help her out while watching you, can't I?"

"I guess. Anyway, that book is the closest to how I learned magic so I know the method works. I'll be going through these books to copy out all the things I want from them but when I'm done I'll hand them over, too. Maybe they can help if that one has some part that's confusing to you."

"Hold on. I thought I wasn't going to learn magic or anything?"

"Meh. Did you have something else in particular to do at times like this? There's not really anywhere to do physical activities right now and using some rest times like this where sleeping isn't really an option either is a great time to learn some magic. Some day it could help you when you most need it."

"I thought this was difficult and would take years, though?"

"Probably. Good thing you have us to help you out, huh? I'll be honest here. I'm kind of using you as a test subject. I may have to teach some of this stuff someday and I want to know what all works and what doesn't."

"Well...why does it have to be me?"

"Is there someone else around?"

"But..."

"Just think of it as something to waste time with. Who knows, maybe you'll actually enjoy it."

"Fine."

"Alright. I'll work through these other books first so you can try and use them, too, if you want."

Marik turned around and started going through the first book while writing down anything from it he thought he might need or use. When he was done he placed it one the floor behind him and moved on to the next one. After focusing on that task for several hours he finally finished and turned fully around to place the last book on top of the rest. He looked over and saw that Sai had her head almost touching Sara's as they looked through the book she was holding while whispering. Sai glanced up and noticed him watching them so she gave him a smile and light wave before looking back down and continuing her tutoring. Marik smiled and pushed the stack of books he had gone through a little closer to them before turning back around and moving on to the task he was most anxious about.

He had only the barest of knowledge about enchanting and now that he was stuck with arcane arts he wanted to learn more to see if there was a way that he could still do enchanting. He carefully read through the beginner's book while occasionally picking up one of the cheap accessories to examine it and compare it with whatever the book was saying. The light of the morning soon started coming in through the window and Marik looked up from what he was doing. He glanced over and saw that Sara had a look of intense concentration on her face while she read something with Sai standing back and watching over her. He didn't want to interrupt her since it didn't look like she hated working on magic after all so he waited until she looked up before giving her a smile and a light wave.

"I think breakfast will be ready before too long. You seemed to be enjoying yourself somewhat so I didn't want to bother you until you were at a good stopping point but if you are how about we head down and get some food?"

They both nodded at him and everyone stood up and started stretching. They all headed down to the dining area and saw that the food wasn't ready yet so they decided to just sit at a table and wait.

"So, what do you two want to do today?"

Sai looked over at him and tilted her head.

"I though you'd want to just stay in and play with your new stuff today."

"Well, yes. That is what I would want to do but I'm not such a terrible person that I'll pick my stuff that can be done later over your stuff that you might want to do while we're still here."

"Oh. As long as we get some time to try some of the things we didn't get to yet then I'm okay with whatever."

"My wife is a sex fiend. What about you Sara?"

"I'd prefer to just rest today. I'll have to run a lot tomorrow, right? Just let me know before you two start anything so I can leave the room, okay? Also try to get it out of your systems before night comes. I'd like to try and sleep tonight."

"Sounds fair to me."

Sai nodded as well and they moved on to talking about things they had seen that the others might have missed while they had been walking around the past two days. Breakfast was ready before long so they ate and then went back to their room to continue doing what they had been before they went down to eat.