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When they got back to the jet, Zoe pulled out her phone and started researching dragons, and Elijah counted how much money he'd have left after paying August. It wasn't much at all; out of the six hundred and seven coronam in his bag, he'd only have fifty-seven left after paying for the ride to The Spear and back.

The demon sighed deeply and put his bag back on the seat beside him. Fifty-seven wasn't a lot at all, especially not for two people on the run from Lyca Corp. But he'd do as best as he could to ensure that it lasted. Once he and Haru were back in this part of the world, he'd find somewhere to set up base again, and then he'd work out how to get more money. That was...if Haru wanted to stay with him. What if he wanted to go and live with his rich parents?

Elijah scowled at the thought of Haru leaving him. It hurt his heart, his soul. But if Haru wanted to go back to Samayō-Akuma, then he'd go with him. He didn't care what it took to be with him; he'd do whatever was needed.

"Okay, so...there are a few dragon species that live in Ascela, so I'd assume we'd see them past The Ice Wall," Zoe said, breaking the silence.

"Are they aggressive?" Elijah asked.

"Or like...huge?" Jake added.

Zoe scrolled on her phone for a moment. "Well, some of them are," she answered, ignoring Jake. "The Ascelan Frostwing is extremely territorial, and a female's territory can spread for up to a hundred kilometres."

"A hundred?" the pardus exclaimed. "That's a lot of land to cover, even for a dragon."

A concerned frown stole Zoe's intrigued one.

"What?" Elijah muttered.

"It says that the Ascelan Frostwing is like a spider; it sets little like...tripwires under the snow and can feel when they're disturbed from their nest...kind of like a web. Depending on how large the territory is, the dragon would be on us in minutes if we stepped on one of the wires."

Elijah sighed deeply—

"Oh, but it says that the Frostwing's territory border always has...eugh... it's crystalized pee to ward off other dragons and larger predators."

Jake grimaced. "Ew, frozen pee."

"It looks like this," Zoe said as she showed her phone screen to Elijah and Jake. "Like yellow crystals."

The pardus groaned again.

Elijah snarled irritably at him. "It's just fucking piss. Calm down."

Jake pouted and crossed his arms.

Zoe took her phone back and scrolled through it. "And this is what the dragon looks like." She showed them her phone again, revealing the picture of a six-limbed ice-white dragon covered in long, jagged spikes that looked a lot like spider legs.

"It even looks like a spider," the pardus grumbled.

"It can get up to thirty feet tall," the girl said uneasily. "It breathes ice, and when it's snowing, it can practically disappear in the blizzard."

Jake scoffed. "Giant spider that turns invisible. Wonderful."

"Weaknesses?" Elijah asked.

"Um...fire, especially demon fire, and silver. It also can't hide from demon sensory ethos, so we'd be able to feel its ethos or life force."

Her answer made Elijah feel a little better about the fact that they might be facing dragons on the way to getting Haru. There were silver bullets in his bag, and both he and Zoe had fire at their disposal.

The girl then scrolled through her phone again. "Next is the Greykin Shieldhorn; it's actually a drake." She showed them both a picture of a scaled rhinoceros-looking beast. It didn't have wings on its back; instead, there were wing-looking horns attached to the back of its neck, and in one picture, they folded over the creature's face to form a shield. "It's mostly a herbivore and lives in herds, but when they have young around, they get really defensive and attack anything on sight within their line of sight, but they don't have very good eyesight. They graze mostly around lakes and rivers, and they move around a lot like elephants do. No breath attack or anything, but they charge really fast. Their turn radius sucks, though, and they're susceptible to any fire, silver, and severium."

"What's severium?" Elijah asked.

"It's a crystal that forms in the footprints of dragons when elf blood is added. It contains gold and is really flammable," she explained without having to look it up.

The demon raised an eyebrow. "Why do you know that?"

"Oh...from...school," she said with a shrug. "We learned a little bit about dragons and the Aegis in senior year."

His confusion grew. "Aegis?"

"Dragons...but like...gods," Jake answered.

"What?"

"The Aegis are the offspring of a certain Numen called Letholdus," Zoe explained. "Do you know what a Numen—"

"Yes."

She nodded. "So, yeah. They look like dragons, and some of them hide amongst dragons because they blend in."

His confusion became concern. "We're not going to run into an Aegis, are we?"

"Probably not," Zoe said confidently. "A lot of them left Aegisguard when Letholdus was defeated."

He had questions—so many questions—but none of them were going to help him find Haru. There was clearly a lot that he didn't know, things he would know if he'd been taught more than just to fight by Lyca Corp., and he wasn't going to lie that it was a little embarrassing. But he'd figure out shit in his own time; when he needed it, he'd do his research.

"Anyway," Zoe said, scrolling through her phone. "Um...the Northern Iceclaw. This one's a wyvern and gets about thirteen feet tall. They live in packs, and there's normally always an Alpha. They're mostly found in ice caves, but they come out at night to hunt." She held her phone out, showing them the picture of a fairly mundane-looking white wyvern; wings, two horns, and a long, spine-covered tail. "Fire and severium are their weaknesses."

"What about gold?" Jake then asked. "Aren't we supposed to wear it to confuse the dragons' sense?"

"That's only with Aegis," she mumbled, looking through her phone. "And we're not going on an Aegis hunt."

The pardus frowned a little. "Right."

Zoe continued, "Then there's the Oceanic Blizzardtail. It's a wyrm and spends most of its time in the water. This one isn't usually aggressive, but it can be if it thinks you're a threat."

"I don't like the sound of Blizzardtail," Jake muttered.

"It can spin its tail around so fast that it can create a blizzard in a light snowfall or even mini tsunamis when in the water," Zoe read. "Well, I guess it's a good thing we chose to fly rather than sail."

Elijah crossed his arms and slouched back in his seat. "What about when we're flying? Are there dragons that might think the plane is a threat?"

Zoe searched through her phone. "Well...it says here that the Northern Featherwing spends most of its time in the sky. It's an amphiptere, so it doesn't have legs, and it mostly just glides on the wind. It can get aggressive if other airborne creatures, or in our case, vehicles, get too close." She frowned as she read to herself in silence. "Oh...that's pretty cool."

"What?" Elijah questioned.

"It says here that some pilots have this special like...sonar device installed which deters dragons and other flying ethos beasts from getting too close to aeroplanes. It's apparently used in a lot of commercial planes."

"Do you think Augustus has one installed?" Jake asked.

"I think it's just August," Zoe corrected him. "And I'd imagine so. He seemed pretty confident about flying over The Ice Wall, so he must be prepared."

"He better be considering the amount of money we're paying him," Elijah muttered. If it turned out that August didn't have something to deter the dragons, though, he wasn't going to look for a new pilot. He wasn't going to waste any more time. He had a sniper in his bag; he'd deal with the dragons himself if he had to.

Jake then rested his arms on the table. "That dude's weird, man. What's like...up with the blue hair and purple eyes? I would've thought he was an elf, but he doesn't have the pointy ears," he said, tapping his own left ear.

Zoe didn't reply. She was reading something on her phone.

"What?" Elijah asked her.

She looked up. "Oh. I was just looking into the sonar thing. It's pretty interesting. Did you know that most dragons' ethos detection is similar to a dolphin's echolocation? They emit this like...low growl and they receive the echoes of sound waves that bounce off objects near them, and they can tell whether the object or creature or whatever has ethos or not."

Jake didn't look very interested. "Yeah...cool."

Zoe held the phone towards Elijah. "Look."

He took it from her and read through the article. It helped him understand a little more how dragons worked and what he should expect once they got to The Spear. By the looks of it, most dragons felt more threatened by humans than Caeleste, which was understandable since the humans seemed to hunt every single ethos beast that existed.

"What's wrong, Antonio?" Zoe asked.

Elijah glanced up from the phone and watched the girl pet her dog, which whined and yapped.

"Oh, you need to go outside?"

The dog barked.

"I'm just gonna take him outside for a sec," she said, standing up. "Is that okay?"

Elijah nodded and mumbled, "Don't take too long."

"I can go with—"

"No," the demon snarled, cutting Jake off.

The pardus scoffed. "I'm not a child, you know."

"You certainly fucking act like one," Elijah grumbled.

Jake gritted his teeth. "Are you both still seriously hung up on this shit?! I said I was sorry!"

Zoe turned to face him, glaring down at him. "You got a child killed, Jake!" she exclaimed angrily. "All because you don't listen!"

He looked like he was struggling to work out what to say next.

"Don't even fucking bother," Elijah warned him.

Instead of replying, Jake turned his back to them and stared out the window like a stubborn child who'd just been scolded.

Zoe then sighed heavily. "I'll be right back." She picked up her dog and left the jet.

Elijah watched through his window as Zoe took her rat-dog over to a bush and put him on the ground. He then sighed and turned his attention back to the phone. Once he finished reading the article about dragons' sensory abilities, he left the website and scrolled through the search engine's results for whatever Zoe typed in.

He clicked the search bar, and when Zoe's search history popped up, he hesitated. Haru Okaminoou. He clicked the name, and when a long list of articles and website links came up, Elijah stared at them, conflicted as to whether he should open them or not. The majority of the previews of each site said the same thing, that Haru went missing when he was five and that his parents were doing everything they could to find him...and Elijah once again found himself wondering if his parents were looking for him, too.

The demon opened the search bar and typed his name and 'missing child'.

Nothing came up.

He frowned despondently. But then again, there were a lot of kids in the lab who didn't know their real names and either chose names for themselves or were given them by the doctors and nurses. What if Elijah wasn't his real name?

As his sullen frown became conflicted again, he typed in 'missing children."

A lot came up. Millions of missing kids.

He had to narrow it down.

Elijah typed in 'missing Caeleste children, demon and lycan'.

And surely enough, hundreds of results popped up.

He clicked the first website, which listed thousands of missing children, all lycan or demon. As he scrolled through the site, he recognized some of the pictures—some of them were kids he'd seen at the lab he'd been held at. So he kept scrolling, hoping that he might find a picture of himself...but he didn't. Even Haru was on the list, and he saw Enid, too. But not him.

Why?

Elijah scowled as despair gripped his heart. Did he even have parents? Did they even care? If he did, it didn't seem like they gave a shit. They hadn't even reported him missing.

What if...they were dead? What if Lyca Corp. had to kill them to get to him?

He went back to the search page and added 'parents murdered' to his search. A few results popped up, articles reporting that whole families had been killed mysteriously and one or all of their children were missing. There were pictures, places, even exact times of death...but there was no photo of him.

With a dismayed sigh, he put the phone down and looked out the window again. Zoe was still waiting for her dog, which was doing laps around the small bush.

"You okay?" Jake asked.

"Fine," he grumbled.

"You don't sound fi—"

"I said I'm fine," he snapped.

"All right, God," Jake muttered.

Elijah then watched as Zoe made her way back towards the jet. Once she climbed inside and sat down, he handed her phone back to her.

"Did you finish reading about the echolocation stuff?" she asked.

He nodded. "They're more threatened by humans than us."

"I guess that makes sense," she said, making herself comfortable as her dog curled up under the table.

"What time is it?" Jake muttered.

Zoe checked on her phone. "Just come up to four."

The pardus sighed deeply. "We've still got eight hours. What are we supposed to do for eight hours?"

"Maybe you can sit there and work out why we're so mad at you," Zoe mumbled under her breath.

Jake clearly heard her but didn't snap back. He scoffed irritably and went back to glaring out the window.

"Could we maybe order some food?" Zoe asked. "I'm getting hungry."

Elijah sighed and said, "Whatever." He leaned back in his seat and stared aimlessly. He knew better than to dwell on his sadness, but he couldn't help it. There was nothing about him or his parents online, and he didn't even know if he had family; if he did, they hadn't bothered to report him missing.

What if Harris was telling the truth? What if his family really did hand him over to Lyca Corp. willingly? There was only one way for him to get the answers, but...right now, he wasn't even sure if he wanted them.

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