The Gallants and Lunare took off. They took turns flying and co-piloting, and when it was once again Gonuret and Kelius's turn to fly, they finally caught sight of their destination. What appeared to be a giant funnel made out of all kinds of earth and metals jutted high over the water looking like an inverted cliff. 

"What the fuck?" Kelius hissed as he looked on. "It looks like the world had a terrible case of indigestion and its ass exploded!" Gonuret sighed beside him. "What? It seriously does!"

"It appears to be a massive crater," Emyve concluded.

"The scanners found a plateau to land on..." Gonuret pointed out as they flew overhead. "Should we go down?"

"Yeah! I wanna explore it!" Ruthed added.

"Then, prepare for landing, everyone," Gonuret warned as they carefully descended into darkness. As they got closer to one of the platforms, strange lights could be seen, though none of them could quite pinpoint the source of them.

"Ok, what now? We can't just all hop out of the ship, I mean what if there's more air pressure down th-birthedfromapuredragon'sass!" Kelius ended in a yowl as something rather large landed in front of the ship. "I damn near pissed myself. Are all of you seeing what I'm seeing?"

"That is a pure dragon. I thought they were extinct." After a thick moment of tension, he looked behind him to see that the other Gallants all had a mixture of shocked and pensive expressions on their faces. "As Lunare, I'm going to try to communicate with it. The rest of you stay here."

"You are out of your mind if you think that I'll let you go out there by yourself. Sindri would kill me and bury me if anything happened to you, and then Ansar would would do the same because his best friend lost the love of his life before he was properly fucked. Just…no. I'm coming with you," Kelius retorted.

The two of them were rather quiet and anxious as they climbed the hatch of the ship and opened it on the side to come out. The pure dragon was so immense it took up most of the platform, which was the size of at least three compartments of their bullet trains. The creature was blue, the purest blue that they've ever seen. The underside of its wings was a concentrated yellow, as its eyes. Gonuret was about to introduce himself when Kelius spoke.

"My name's Kelius, I'm the second head representative of our kind, the Lunare! And this is my assistant, Gonuret! We come from the surface!" Kelius yelled.

Gonuret held back the urge to gape incredulously at Kelius. If he tried to correct him now, he didn't know how the pure dragon would react. 

The blue dragon let out what appeared to be a snort and shook its head. 'I can hear you just fine without your having to yell, young astral dragon.' He responded. The voice was male, and it echoed in their minds telepathically.

Gonuret and Kelius looked at one another to confirm that they had both, in fact, heard him.

'Have you come alone?' The pure dragon asked.

"No..." Kelius replied reluctantly. "We have others waiting for us in the ship. Gonuret, why don't you go and tell them to come out."

'I see...' The blue dragon sighed, sounding a bit disappointed.

Gonuret took the cue to rush back into the ship. "It is indeed a pure dragon," He whispered to the others. "He responds telepathically, but doesn't seem to be able to read our thoughts, or he would have realized that Kelius lied about being the Lunare."

"Wait, what!?" Ruthed questioned.

"The important thing is that we try to get the dragon to tell us what it knows." He looked at the four of them and took a deep breath. "I want two of you to stay here guarding the ship, the other two will come with us."

"I wanna come see this!" Ruthed retorted, hopping up from his seat before looking at Emyve. "Wanna come with?"

"Madhal and I could stay here," Ilohir suggested.

Ruthed nodded before heading out of the ship with Emyve, his mouth gaping open upon seeing the big blue dragon.

'I am Duke Borev.' The pure dragon finally introduced himself as he lowered his head. 'Climb onto my neck, and I will take you to see the royal family. If you fall or slide off, I will not be returning for you.'

Ruthed nearly jumped in excitement at the chance to ride a pure dragon. That was until he heard the part about falling off. As soon as they climbed on, Emyve made sure he had a good grip around him, so Ruthed felt a lot safer. He kissed the redhead's cheek before they took off.

The dragon dove down and began to fly parallel to the ground. Glowing stones of all kinds lit up the path all around them and, a few minutes later, they found themselves gaping at an underground palace. 

"If only Ansar could see this..." Kelius whispered the same thought that ran through Gonuret's mind about Sindri.

Emyve would have never imagined that the pure dragons still existed. As he gazed upon the immense palace, his mind rapidly began to guess the amount of pure dragons that lived there.

As Duke Borev landed, armored guards simply bowed their heads and let him through. A smaller, jittery-looking, yellow dragon immediately approached him. 'W-welcome back, my duke...'

'Fringe. Gather the royal family into the throne room. Urgently.' The Duke ordered.

'R-Right away, my duke.' Fringe replied before skittering off on the ground faster than any of the astral dragons could keep up with.

By the time Duke Borev entered the throne room, the royal family was already there. The smaller dragon that seemed to be cowering behind the larger dragon was the same blue hue as Duke Borev. The larger dragon was a pure red. 

'Brother. Brother's wife. I bring you proof that astral dragons are still alive.' Duke Borev stated as he lowered his neck back down for the four of them to slide off.

'Amazing!' Two smaller purple dragons exclaimed nearly at the same time as they ran out from behind the cowering blue dragon and approached the group. They were the size of large horses.

'These two rascals are my niece and nephew, the royal twins.' Duke Borev explained without any shred of enthusiasm.

'Where did you find them?'

'Are there more?'

The twin dragons looked at one another before giving a definite nod. 'We're off to explore!' They declared as they scampered away.

'Cero! Cera!' The queen called a little too late. 'Honestly, dear!' She chided her cowering husband. 'You need to be more firm with them.' To the astral dragons she simply gave, what they could only assume was, a smile. 'Hello, fledglings. Welcome to the palace. I am Queen Caldrea, and this is my husband, King Bale.' She stated as she stepped aside a bit so they could more clearly see his hulking form. The king was seated on top of his tail, and his head was covered beneath his paws. His wings were a telltale sign that he was trembling.

"I'm Lunare Kelius, and these are Gallants Gonuret, Emyve, and Ruthed." Kelius introduced hesitantly.

"I am certain that the existence of both our kinds is quite a shock to all of us, but we are here because the surface of the planet has been shifting violently..." Emyve spoke up. "If I am not mistaken, the same could be happening here."

'You are right in suspecting such a thing.' Queen Caldrea sighed. 'Our palace has existed long before our world began to shift. When the Astral Princess arrived, half of our kind chose to welcome her and all of her strange...technology. But, the other half hid underground in fear. Our ancestors simply assumed that the Astral Princess and her mixed dragons all died off long ago.' Her green eyes peered back down that the group. 'Both our kind seemed to have left the other for dead.'

'The tremors began long after our people settled here.' Duke Borev added. 'We've lived with them for the last century or more. If it is starting to affect the surface as well, then I fear that we are all doomed.'

Their theory was rather sobering to everyone. None of them wanted those fears to come to fruition.

"There has to be something we can do..." Gonuret replied. "Our shared ancestors would not see this planet destroyed just like that!"

"Yeah! We can't just throw in the towel and accept that" Ruthed added to the real Lunare's statement.

The Gallants and Lunare quickly huddled together to discuss a course of action, but it was Kelius that voiced it out loud for the queen. "Since the tremors are far stronger here, we suggest that you evacuate your kingdom so that everyone may take refuge on the surface. With everyone in a bit more safety, we could then work together to figure out what to do from there."

The queen gazed down at Kelius's sincere red eyes. 'Yes, I think that's the best course of action for now. We will begin with the lowest ranks of our people. The royal family will be the last to evacuate.'

Kelius gave a nod. "Allow us to tell our Solare of this so we can begin to accommodate all of you."

'Borev, take them back to where you found them.' Queen Caldrea ordered.

Ruthed let out the breath he didn't realize he had been holding. He was relieved that they would soon be on their way back to keep Sindri and Ansar informed.

'As you wish, your majesty,' Duke Borev conceded.

::::::

Madhal and Ilohir were dutifully guarding the ship and playing cards to pass the time when they heard a strange knock on the side of the ship. When Madhal looked through the front window, he caught sight of a young pure purple dragon. "Should we go out and investigate?" He asked Ilohir.

Ilohir jumped as soon as they heard the strange knock, having been on edge the entire time they were on guard duty. He blinked in surprise at the sight that greeted them. The bluenette nodded hesitantly. "We better go ahead and investigate."

As the two astral dragons cautiously opened the hatch, they were greeted by two excited purple dragons that, though far smaller than the last pure dragon they saw, were quite sizeable themselves.

'Two more astral dragons!' The one that sounded like a girl squealed in their minds.

'Are you friends with the other astral dragons?'

'Where did you come from?'

'Did you come here in that strange, stiff -dragon- shell machine?'

'How come you're not big like us and are missing some parts?'

Madhal couldn't help but chuckle at the youthful chatter in his mind. "One question at a time, and we don't have answers for them all. Yes, we came with the other astral dragons. This 'machine' is called a ship, and we used it to fly us here. As for why we are small and look like this...well, we don't entirely know. But, we do know that our kind mixed with the Astral Princess's people...and somewhere down the line, we now look like this."

Ilohir was a bit stunned hearing the constant questions running through his mind in the voice of children. "And you thought I asked a lot of questions. I think these two have me beat," he decided with a laugh.

'You're both really tiny.'

'Though not as tiny as the Lunare guy.'

'Barely though.'

"We have friends that are even smaller than Kelius," Ilohir informed.

'Really?' They both asked.

"That's right," Madhal agreed.

Cero looked at Cera for a moment. 'Hey, do you think we can turn tiny like them?'

'Uncle did say we could do just about anything with our magic.' Cera replied.

'Yeah, that was the only good thing he ever said to us. Want to try?' Cero prompted.

'Let's do it!' Cera replied.

Then, right in front of Madhal and Ilohir's wide eyes, the scales of the pure purple dragons began to shimmer, and they began to shrink down in size. After a moment, two naked astral dragon children took their place. They both had red hair and yellow eyes. Madhal's jaw dropped. Ilohir's eyes widened even further, and his mouth gaped open, as well.

'We did it!' Cera cheered jumping up and down before the twins began to look each other over since they had never seen each other in this form before.

"T-that's amazing..." Ilohir said, still a bit stunned. It didn't help when the two children ran over to them. He took his jacket off just as Madhal took his shirt off. Ilohir covered the boy with his jacket while Madhal covered the girl. That was when Cero wrapped his arms around Ilohir so he would pick him up.

Having Cero in his arms and seeing Madhal give the girl his shirt caused Ilohir to smile. "...Maybe we should adopt one day." He then blushed deeply, realizing exactly what had come out of his mouth. "Th-that is in the far, far, far future..!"

Cero blinked and smiled with a tinkling laugh. 'He's getting really red.'

Madhal made sure that Cera was completely covered in his shirt before gently ruffling the top of her head. When he heard Ilohir's statement, he felt his heart skip a beat. His smile was warm and heartfelt. "I would love to." Before they could speak any more of it, Madhal caught sight of the silhouette of a dragon flying in the distance. "Someone's coming." He said in a serious tone. "Alright, you two, we have to go back inside for now. Tell no one that you saw us here, ok?"

The twins nodded. 'We should change back now too,' Cero added as he took off the jacket and gave it back to Ilohir.

They both quickly changed back, though the shirt that Madhal gave Cera did not survive the transformation and ripped to shreds. 'Oops, sorry.'

"Don't worry about it," Madhal replied with a light laugh, dragging Ilohir inside and closing the hatch.

When Duke Borev made it to the platform where the ship was parked, his eyes narrowed at his niece and nephew. 'Enough playtime. Go home. Now.'

'Yes, uncle.' They replied mournfully before taking off.

Not a moment later, a strong tremor began to rumble around them. 'All of you should depart.' Bolev instructed as he lowered his neck down for the astral dragons to dismount. 'All except for…you.' He demanded as his paw blocked Kelius's path. 'As the second representative of your kind, he should stay behind in good faith that you return.'

"No, we're not leaving without him!" Gonuret yelled as another tremor hit, a far stronger one that caused parts of the rock to crumble and fall.

Ruthed's eyes widened seeing the Duke block Kelius from following them. "You can't do this!" he yelled, gasping when the second tremor hit.

"Just go!" Kelius called after them. "They're not going to do anything to me! Hurry up and leave so you can come back for me!"

Ruthed frowned upon hearing Kelius's plea, but he nodded and helped Emyve drag Gonuret back into the ship.

"We have to leave now! We don't know when a slab of rock is going to hit the ship. We have to let the Solare know about all this!" Emyve reminded the Lunare.

"But, Kelius!" Gonuret shrieked.

"Damn it, leave!" Kelius yelled.

Ilohir looked on as everyone came back inside the ship except Kelius. "What's going on? Where's Kelius?" He asked as Gonuret and Emyve started up the ship.

"We'll explain on the way back," Ruthed told the other. He looked to Gonuret. "We'll be back for him. Don't worry, he's tough." He tried to assure.

With the rest of the group's safety in mind, Gonuret took off with Emyve as co-pilot. As they ascended through the crater, all they could see was a flash of Duke Borev's teeth and his glowing yellow eyes before they both seemed to disappear into the darkness.