Seren grinned at the male softly as she watched him disappear into his thoughts - perhaps the humans weren't so callous, if he could look longingly at her flame, like he knew what it was like. She felt a pang in her heart as his despair flowed evidently into his words; he hadn't even attempted to mask his emotions.

She watched his flame flicker to life, blue like the fading sky. As he quickly smothered it out, she felt her stomach drop in agony - this male understood. He understood what it could be, would be, and yet he wasn't able to stay. Seren felt the prick of tears stinging her eyes, and she was grateful she had turned to walk in front of him again.

"It was truly wonderful," she recalled, voice cracking slightly as the memories began to come, so distant they could have been dreams. "Magic was never feared, but praised - people were awed by its power, by the gift it should be seen as. Some parents even prayed to the Gods to bless their child with it, so they could only experience its light through their kin."

Her voice became choked, and she ended her wistful reminiscing there before she truly became upset. She didn't want to cry in front of this stranger yet, no matter how familiar he already felt.

Clearing her throat, she blinked the tears from her face, masking her emotions with those of confidence and curiosity. After a moment to recover herself, she began to voice her thoughts. "How does magic disappear from an entire kingdom? What power is strong enough to completely destroy it? There is always balance with magic, but smothering it surely upsets that delicate scale."

She hoped the male would know - he did live in the kingdom, after all. She hadn't thought to ask him his rank in the guard, but she could only assume it was high since he was allowed to voyage into the forest alone.

His scent intermingled with the foliage around her, and even the smell seemed to say he belonged there. Most humans disrupted the natural flow of the wood, but this male had effortlessly blended into its harmony. Seren pondered this statement before she stiffened, nearly imperceptible.

The faintest rumble in the ground set her on edge; a predator had come too close. Growling softly, she lowered herself into a defensive stance, listening for the creature, for the forest to guide her to it.

Turning to her left, she felt its approach seconds before she saw it; nearly silent, a slender creature approached her and Aleron from the shadows. It had made the noise on purpose - had wanted them to see it coming.

The creature slunk on four clawed feet - nearly paws, but almost entirely dagger-sharp claws. Its face resembled a canine, with elongated fangs that dripped with saliva. The eyes - two sets, right above each other - were black, soulless pits. Its hunched shoulders carried rows of sharp spikes - no, quills. They quivered with its every step, and seemed to follow its movement to better protect it. A defense mechanism, then.

Seren shot a fireball towards the creature, the golden flame like a dart through the trees. It evaded, though, despite the speed of her shot, and she felt panic start to rise. What if she needed to shift forms? The human had come to kill a creature of legend; he had never specified, but she knew of only one who could be so revered in the kingdom: herself.

Listening to her describe such a place of wonder, he found himself lost in the depths of his imagination as he tried, in vain, to envision it all. He could feel his heart singing with delight as the picture painted itself in his mind, but it was only brief and as fleeting the blue flame he had extinguished moments before.

Realization struck him, and in his melancholy he acknowledged how he could never live in the lovely dreams of paradise, no, it was reality in which he would live, and it was reality that he had to learn to accept regardless of how ironic it was for him, a wielder of magic, to be serving a kingdom that feared it for all that it was. But, even so, he couldn't let himself let go of it entirely. After all, he liked to escape the clutches of a bitter reality, even if it meant keeping his head in the clouds when he should be staying grounded for the sake of proving fate otherwise.

Upon hearing her voice falter, he figured that it was a sensitive topic that they were encroaching upon.

"It must've been beautiful," he mumured. "Altough, I apologize for bringing up a difficult subject."

The silence that hung in between them was like the delicate threads of a spiderweb, broken upon the sound of questions he wasn't sure how to answer, but nonetheless he was willing to try.

"One of the historians in the palace Archives may know of it, what happened to the magic, but from meeting them before at one of the king's banquets, I've come to find that they are utterly pretentious," he made little effort to hold his tongue. "But since it's not held in the highest regard, exactly, I doubt that any of them would be willing to divulge the workings behind it, and that would depend on whether they even know. But, I'm sure that there are records somewhere, perhaps I could─"

Relay them over to you, he wanted to say, if not for the undeniable fact that he would have sounded absurd. They had only just met after all, and he knew, just like any other person working within the palace, that the records within the Archives were to be kept within its walls. Despite the authority he withheld as a royal guard, he wouldn't even be allowed to leave with something so precious. Not to mention how his words almost implied that he would return, or rather, wanted to out of his own volition; he doubted that he would even be able to do so without raising suspicion.

However, he was unable to continue overanalyzing how his near slip of the tongue would be perceived, upon the sudden approach of the creature.

He moved quickly, reaching for the hilt of his sword almost immediately, the cold steel biting into the warmth of his gloved hand. The blade itself was shining with a menacing glint upon its surface as if burning with the wicked desire to draw first blood, and Aleron himself hesitated to approach despite the urge to yield to the instincts that had been embedded into him since his first expedition.

He glanced back to Seren, worry flashing in his eyes for a moment as the creature evaded the ball of flame before his attentionw was redirected. The emptiness within its eyes was beyond unnerving, and admittedly, by the time he turned to it, it had already lunged with its claws outstretched and a gaping maw ready to tear at his flesh.

His gaze didn't waver, even as he narrowly avoided the claws that barely grazed his skin, and although it was not enough to cut deep, he could already see the thin trails of crimson it left behind.

Seren watched as the creature ripped its claws through the air, skimming the fine skin of her newfound companion. She let out a near feral growl, feeling a phantom pain skitter across her own skin. Shock briefly touched her face as she pulled away minutely, but her rage was quick to overshadow it.

She growled once more, diverting the creature's attention towards her before taking off through the forest, silently bounding away from Aleron. Her feet skimmed the ground, barely touching before she was once again in the air - like a deer, she thought, grimacing at the horrific irony.

Once far enough away, she crawled into the branches of a nearby birch tree, scaling it with feline accuracy. In the top branches of the birch, she jumped into the air, feeling her skin tighten and heat work its way through her body as she embraced her true form.

Skin turned to scales, hair to horns, and she felt the dilation of her pupils as they slitted. The heat, originally flowing within her, soon emanated all around her in fiery rage as she let out a screeching cry and dove back towards the creature, following its scent - it had begun to circle back towards the human, no longer interested in the prey it couldn't reach.

She landed gracefully on the ground, and began to stalk towards the two beings. The ground did not burn where she stepped - the forest breathed for her, and she for it. She would not, could not harm it. Her flame dissapated near the ground, and bounced harmlessly off of any foliage it brushed. Brighter and brighter she burned, the very energy of the forest seeming to engage with her soul.

She reentered the clearing they had been passing through, and huffed a breath of relief - she was behind Aleron, for now.

The creature crawled through the shadows provided by the dense plant growth, and Seren snarled towards it once before flaring her wings and stalking towards it. She looked down the bridge of her snout at the creature, allowing its fear to set in before she threw a talon out, quickly slicing the creatures throat. She watched as the darkness faded from the creature, until all that was left was a husk, before silently sending a prayer to whatever Gods it hailed from that its spirit returned home safely.

Satisfied, she curled her talons into the dirt, turning to face the scene behind her. She beheld the human, even more ethereal with her improved vision in this form. Her flame seemed to pulse in his presence, aching to near him. Without thinking, she looked towards his face, wanting to see what he was thinking.

As a dragon.

Panicking, she felt her eyes widen before she shot straight into the air, through the trees and to a safe location where she could avoid the male for a moment.