A little cave.

'Don't die.'

His dim eyes raised themselves up. A vestige of will remained within him, for what it was worth.

Try once more, life...

"Please..." The whimpering was unending, and John stared once more at that darkness. Whoever it was, he'd rather not deal with.

"I'm not going to kill you." John said. The resounding voice of a dragon was what commanded this human to hush. "I just wish to live in peace. You may recuperate here for as long as you deem, but do not implicate me." That was his only wish.

He did not want to know another soul in this world. And as such, time will erode the belief until he seeks the company of beings who fear him.

John wandered further past the woman, who was breathing in shivers, and eventually found the edge wall. He lowered his limbs and found a comfortable pose.

'To surpass one's talent, one must destroy it.' Pain and Pain; that would be his life for a while. His lacking 'talent' would have to shatter (and as such revoke its entirety) and rebuild continuously.

To do this, you need to manipulate your mind in a special way. This 'manipulation' was akin to an artificial instinct that one had conjured. For him, he had created a new concept in his mind through repeated meditation.

This concept was 'Destruction'. Like moving ones leg, he could command his mind to surpass his consciousness and wreak havok on his fundamental 'mind'. This wasn't supernatural, as he really did meditiate like a monk in that scenario to obtain this. Like it has been said, each scenario wretched away the world's help, putting more of the crap into the actual player's hands.

And that crap was proper mindfulness. Bloody useless.

Anyway, with 'Destruction', John can kill his talent. He can kill anything, actually, but one must never touch their mind's systems lightly. The complexity of such a thing can make a mishap invoke depression, lunacy, or even schizophrenia.

Do not mess with your mind.

So, he has strictly limited it to that single part. His 'talent'. He uses another concept, 'Surpass', to revitalise and upgrade the destroyed mass. The extent at which it does this is small, and variable, but it will always do 'some' form of improvement.

One must remember that the mind does not like exactness. It will always be a hazy mess of shite.

"Well. Guess I'm doing this again." Well, what can be so painful about this?

John closed his eyes, relaxing his muscles, and began to command his mind to 'destroy his Aether Talent'.

Tick. Tock.

It was time.

It required a damn long time to get anything note worthy.

Outside the cave, and a couple meters away, a bleary eyed youth wandered forward. His build was lanky, and he had leather armour and a sword on his side. He was carrying a dead rabbit.

"This should be enough..." He said, eyeing the surrounding with his impish face. His gait found the cave entrance soon enough, with the path being so open, and he relaxed his posture a little.

"Lucy, I'm back." He said, tapping his feet into the echoey room. He let the darkness envelop him, but he seemed familar with the surroundings—walking straight to a particular location.

A couple of seconds of walking made him tilt his head. "Hey, you there?" He squatted down and fumbled at some wood on the ground. The noises were dissonant in the silence.

He still got nothing, so he flicked his thumb. A spark clattered off his skin, and it landed and lit the the small twigs atop of the flame wood.

The embers slowly lit the barren cave. He first found Lucy looking at him. Her wide eyes and pale frosty lips seemed to be spelling something out.

D. R. A. G.

After that, his face contorted and he began to shake. His gaze left her mouth and followed her arm, which was pointing at a particular corner of the cave.

Where the light festered around, where the blackness seemed surreal; eyes that held a morbid crimson, and a twisted torso that was shrouded in scaled wings.

Dragon.

Thud. The man's knees gave way and he nearly fell face first into the flames. The dragon meekly watched him, neither moving nor talking.

"H-He... Eheh..." He floundered words, but Lucy broke his cold sweat.

"D-Don't speak... He said he won't kill me... If I don't implicate him." She said these words low and careful, constantly watching for a reaction from the beast in the corner of the cave.

Yet the beast merely looked a the two of them, eyes glimmering over the flame.

"O-Oh... That so." He got up with extreme tension, and picked up his rabbit. "I-I got f-food... Lucy." He kept eyeing the corner.

"Good." Even in this situation, her mouth could not stop itself from watering.

John watched the two converse. His face lifted a little.

'I wonder how long they'll stay here.' The thought wandered in his mostly focused mind. He didn't need to put all his consciousness in the task of improving his talent, so he let his consciosness have a little bit to think with.

Just enough to keep himself sane.

"Alright, I'll cook... it now." The man announced this weirdly. He waddled back to the fire, and made a stick contraption to hover the corpse above the flame. John watched him shakily skin the rabbit, and then begin roasting.

He sat down and half-immersed himself in the task. John's mind turned a little shaky. Of pasts he had mostly lost, and of people he...

The flickering flame, the dull motions of cooking meat, and the amiability. Of course, that may not be here with his presence, but he could still feel the care these two people had for each other. John looked over at the woman, Lucy, and found her to be quite pretty.

She was emaciated, however. Her skin was quite pallid, and she had a scabbed wound down her left cheek. Yet, she definitely had fierce eyes. Arrowing eyebrows, and a steadfast face.

Of course, this was hidden under her fear from him, but he could still see its rememnants in her. Fading away.

A bit of time passed, silent and in tension, all until the rabbit finished cooking. The man prodded a stick into its flesh, and got up to waddle towards Lucy.

"Mathew..." She looked up at him as he handed her the rabbit. "You don't need to do this, you know." She said this with trembling lips.

He stared down at her. He sat down and said "Eat before it gets cold." He watched John gaze at him from time to time, but time seemed to make him more comfortable with the idea that a Dragon was sleeping with them.

John watched Lucy eat with careful bites, and Mathew stare into space and (sometimes) him. For the first time in a while, he lifted his head. Lucy's chewing froze and Mathew's hand hovered over his sword—his body was shaking.

With a weird smile, John revealed his set of razer teeth. He said, "You two, can you turn off the flame in about an hour? I need some shut eye soon."

The request made them jolt. Mathew opened his mouth, but closed it with a mindless lapse.

Lucy took his steed to reply. "Of course... Sir." She bowed her head to him as she said so. Mathew followed.

"Well, continue what you were doing. Don't mind me, of course, I'm just a slumbering dragon." John lowered his head and half shut his eyes.

Mathew hiccuped.

"T-Thanks..." He didn't really know why he was saying that.