"So, what do you think? Pretty cool, huh?"

While I'm larger than a dog now, I'm much smaller than a human, and it's hard to look at Ignis without stretching and breaking my non-existent neck. He crouches close to me to have a better look.

"That's impressive! But can you even do anything in this form?" He inquires with his hand on his chin.

"Not much, to be honest. The fire salamander's main weapons of choice are its bite and fireball. Even if I could use the latter, it would probably hurt me too since I'm made of water now. But its bite is strong enough to break bones or even kill. Let's test it out, shall we?"

He retreats a few steps, worried. I think he got the wrong idea, heh.

"If you bite me, I will smash you on the ground!"

"No worries, no worries, check this out!" I try to gesture using my tail to point at me.

I go towards one of the small pieces remaining of the pillar that Ignis smashed. I pick up one with my mouth and stare at Ignis. The stone piece almost fills my entire mouth, but, hehe.

CRUNCH

It's crushed inside my mouth. Now I can see I really impressed him this time.

"You know how hard that pillar was, even if it was just white stone filled with magic, it still hurt your arm a little. This way, now I can at least help a little and not be a burden, until I find a way to restore my magic or even my human form."

"Don't worry about it, Flint, we are going to find a way. Actually, you need to do something about my arm, so please worry about it, haha." He cracks a joke and raises his reddish thumb in approval.

This guy, even after all this, he still puts his trust in me. I have to work hard to repay this trust.

"Sure, shall we go, then?"

"Right, let me lead the way. Since Multum comes from the trade city on the west, and he ambushed me on my way to the east, we can only go north or south to buy ourselves more time. In truth, no matter the direction we go, it's only a matter of time until he finds our tracks, so I'd rather go south. We are close to the Steel Republic border to the north, we can't currently deal with the patrols over there, and I don't want to become an ice block on the Frost Empire. South it is, we are going to Eclair City, any objections?"

"None, but do you think they will let us in? When I was human they would let us come and go when I lied that you were a summoned servant. Now, they will probably attack us on sight." Sometimes I would have to even donate to the guards some coins to enter, the nerve of these people.

"We can figure something on our way there. There's a mercenary camp in that direction too, the villages around pay them for protection, and they seem to accept anyone. Maybe we can join a group for a job very far from here, and even make some coin."

"Sounds like a plan." Indeed, I guess he wasn't wasting his time while I was on Multum's trade house.

We leave the isolation room, I made it in a rush, and even if everything went wrong, it served its purpose, I guess, too bad we can't collapse it easily, it would buy us more time, letting that old man look for us in the rubble.

A setting sun greets me. It's been a while, yet the all familiar sun feels different this time. Instead of feeling the good ol' warmth, I suddenly feel dry. A few minutes later, on our way, the dry sensation doesn't disappear but also doesn't seem to be anything threatening to me, just uncomfortable. Fortunately, the forest we are traveling isn't thick enough to hinder our movement but good enough to provide some comforting cover.

The truth is, we won't be going too far. Ignis is injured and already traveled a good distance to find me, and my head still hurts from all the stress and near-death experience.

A few hours later, the sun already gave its last glow of the day and went it's way, with the moon soon greeting us with its pale face, stars shining all around it.

I find it ironic that we magicians begin our journeys all looking for all kinds of supernatural phenomena. But we soon ignore these wonderful gems that life grants us. Perhaps they are not magical in nature, but it would be a lie to say that nature isn't magical.

"Flint, let's settle down for today." He says in a low tone.

He must be terribly tired.

"Okay."