The cart stopped when night fell again. Peering through one of the slits of our crate, I could see what looked like a stone wall. The cart started moving again, slowly this time. The walls got closer and soon I could see guards. We were entering another human settlement, but this time it was a fortified one. I didn’t feel good about this, but there wasn’t exactly another choice.

The cart kept going for a while. When it eventually stopped, we could hear things being moved, before we got moved ourselves. We were taken somewhere inside, it looked like. I started panicking, but Vyth managed to calm down a bit. Still, how are we getting out of this? All we could do was hope they weren’t opening the crates immediately after putting them down.

Luck was on our side. We were put down and left alone. I couldn’t see what was going on outside, as the slit I was using faced the wall. I could hear footsteps going away from us. Once I stopped hearing them, I opened the lid a bit and looked through. The light of a candle that was only a few inches away from my face blinded me. I nearly yelled out in pain, but Vyth quickly held my jaw shut. As I was still rubbing my eyes from the pain, he took a look outside. No one. He tapped on my shoulder, signalling to move. Like a snake, he quietly snuck out the crate and moved to a set of stairs leading upwards. I followed in his steps, though not nearly as impressive. Before letting him go up, I quickly checked the steps, to see if they were noisy. That, they were, forcing us to shimmy up the railing.

The building seemed to be entirely built of wood, not unlike the village houses from the previous settlement. The quality seemed to be much better, however, aside for the stairs. Upstairs led to a living room. There was a fireplace at the opposite wall and two leather sofas facing it. On the wall to my right hung a painting of a beautiful grass field with a floating castle in the background. Underneath it was a small bookshelf, about half filled. I immediately went for it, but Vyth quickly grabbed my arm and started dragging me to another room. I could hear the sound of footsteps again, coming from below.

“We can take stuff later”, Vyth whispered.

He opened the first door to our left and quickly got us both through it, before quietly closing it. The footsteps stopped and I could make out the sound of a crate being put down. A heavy, male voice said something, though I wasn’t even prepared to distinguish the words from each other. We were tense, listening to him chat with someone else. They could be coming up at any point and discover us.

They didn’t seem to be moving from their spot, though, and I found my stress being eased somewhat by a sweet and botanical scent. I turned around, only now looking around the room we hid in. It was a bedroom, with a large, two-person bed in the middle of the room, towering over us. The sheets were red and a huge dark wooden frame surrounded it. It looked like something out of a medieval king’s room, though a bit less extravagant. There was a large closet to my left, made of the same wood, a large mirror standing against the wall with the door, and a wooden chest in front of the bed.

I began looking for the source of the scent, as Vyth started rummaging through the chest. I found a tall, purple candle on the nightstand. That probably meant the smell was lavender. Back in my human days, I had never smelled lavender. I avoided it, since I associated it with crazy pseudo-science. Guess they were right about it’s calming effects.

“Hey, Oth! Do you know what this is?”, Vyth asked a bit too loudly.

I quickly scooted to the door and listened for any reactions. Nothing. The two men seemed to have left. Or were staying quiet to sneak up on us. I took a deep breath and slightly opened the door. Nothing, again. I slowly walked up to the stairs, checking just in case, but found no human staring back at me from the bottom few steps. I let out a sigh of relief and returned to the room. Vyth was holding a wheel of cheese, reaching about half his size in diameter, and a bottle of wine.

“Well, the green one is poison. And… the yellow one is poison as well?”, I told him.

Alcohol would be a bad choice for us. Seeing as we’re so small, that bottle might be enough to do us in. As for the cheese. I was gonna suggest eating it, but the alcohol being poisonous to us reminded me of a small fact I learned as a human. Cats are lactose intolerant, so we probably are as well.

“Alright. I’ll trust your judgement”, Vyth responded, as he began putting the items back.

“Well, I’m not completely sure about the second one, but the first one definitely is. Wait! Keep the green one. It's called a bottle with a liquid in it called wine. We might be able to use it”.

I had thought of using it to distract humans. Once they’re drunk, we’d have an easier time moving around without trouble.

“Let’s look for more stuff. Try to find something to keep them in”.

I went through the other rooms. The house was pretty small. About the size of a village house or an average New York apartment. Despite its size, it was beautifully decorated, if not a bit too tacky in some places. This merchant must be making a lot of profit, which means he’ll be all the angrier if he knows what happened to his apples.

“Oth! I found a sack!”, Vyth yelled just as I came out of the kitchen.

He held a grey, linen sack with a brown rope loosely around the top.

“It doesn’t have any holes in it, so it…”, he began saying as he turned the bag inside out. Luckily, he aimed it upward, as gold and silver coins were launched upward with enough force to damage the roof.

“Did you really have to do that?!”, I yelled.

“How would I know?”.

“You’ve seen me fling spells. Surely, you could think of things like this being a thing? You could have…”

Our little shouting match was interrupted when the strong smell of something burning crept up our noses and started a coughing fit. I looked behind Vyth, at the stairs, and saw black smoke rising up from below.

“Fire! Get whatever we can take and get out!”, I ordered.

We began hastily collecting all the food we could from the kitchen and stuffing it in the bag. The scent became more and more overpowering. It was getting harder to breath. As we rushed out the kitchen, I saw the bookshelf again. To its left, there was a window, and to its right, the fire was creeping up the railing. We rushed to the window, ready to jump out and escape. But, I couldn’t help myself. As Vyth jumped out, I stopped and hurriedly started putting the books in the bag. The fire was quickly spreading and was threatening to consume me if I didn’t hurry. I grabbed the last book, my hand getting slightly burned from the fire that was now taking over the shelf as well, and jumped out the window.

I landed on a rooftop, where Vyth was waiting. He gave me a well earned slap against the back of my head. On the ground, people were watching the building burn and hurriedly grabbed buckets of water to try and put it out. A rotund man with long black hair was on his knees, yelling and distressed. Another man with shoulder length ashen hair and a dark purple robe pushed him aside and pulled out a stick. He began waving it around in a calculated manner, before slashing with it into the air. Waves, conjured up out of nowhere, followed the motion and crashed against the merchants house. Other people with similar robes rushed to his sides and conjured up large bubbles of water, which they dropped on the roof. Within a mere minute, the entire building was extinguished, though damaged. I stared at them in awe, wondering if I would ever be able to do that as well.

Vyth gave a tug on my arm, gesturing to leave. We ran across the rooftop to the next. I looked back at the scene and met the eye of the ashen mage.