A Salamander, but Mighty

POV: Tamara

They had distanced themselves from Stanbroodge and were – sadly – headed in a direction that Tamara didn't know and couldn't influence: she had to find out who or what this Seething Forge was and then find a way to push Luchael to go in that direction, and even more important, she had to find a way to communicate her intentions to the leporan…

She had thought about it during the time of the journey in which she had been unable to do anything but stay rolled up inside a backpack, a long, interminable journey on a road that at least until that moment had shown no sign of being rough. Tamara ended up nodding off again and again and dreaming of Velen, alone again in that invisible prison which was also the source of her power.

She's been there for millennia without me, I don't think she'll go crazy or anything will happen to her in the next month or two, she thought, just to reassure herself.

The clasp of the backpack was opened, but no light hit her eyes; the evening had come and the travelers were preparing to face the night, Luchael hung over her, illuminated from behind by the yellowish light of some torches, "hey, I hope the travel didn't bore you too much," he whispered, "it wouldn't be safe even now to get you out since someone might see you, but I had an idea: could you go out and transform into your humanoid form?”

Tamara jumped out of her backpack and measured the distance between her and the nearest obstacle before letting her Mana flow and activating [Humanoid Form]: in a few seconds, a sort of fire salamander of the size of a little girl took form, the size was just right to go unnoticed, perhaps, but it was more than evident that she was not human. Luchael nodded in satisfaction, and put on her a rather loose robe with a hood that, once pulled over her head, would completely hide her monstrous features.

“Good, now let's hope that no one decides to inspect you, since a common object like this stuff certainly can't hide you from that,” said Luchael, who seeing Tamara's reaction, hastened to say, “usually there isn't reason to inspect someone since the only information one can get is race and level, and not even the level if the person being inspected is at least ten levels higher than the inspector.”

Tamara tilted her head, so the Core Guardian was at least ten levels higher than me when I faced it… she thought to herself.

“You have to get out of there to eat and learn to write, besides, dressed like this you look like a little girl, no one expects a little girl to be a fifteenth level monster.”

Tamara sighed, Luchael wasn't entirely wrong and her mission to free Velen was a priority. She nodded a few times and when the leporan got out of the wagon she did the same. The leporan and the templar had settled away from the other travellers, lighting a fire on which they were cooking some meat in a pot whose scent immediately awakened her feral instincts.

To maintain maximum anonymity, Tamara was forced to keep her head down, meaning that she was in no position to see Helen's face to try to figure out what she was thinking and whether she should think about how to kill her quickly if she attempted to carry out her murderous intentions towards her.

C-calm down, Tamara, she thought to herself after realizing where her thoughts and instincts had taken her, enough with these thoughts. I'm not... I'm not a cold-blooded killer.

She sat down on a stone.

And a warm-blooded one? So far it's gone well and I've only had to kill monsters, but how many coin flips do I still have in front of me before the coin lands on 'homicide'?

Luchael interrupted her train of thought by placing a bowl of stew and spoon on her lap. Tamara smelled the scent better by closing her eyes: after the period spent inside the dungeon, going back to eating like a person was an event welcomed with pleasure, like a return to normality for a human being. She ate the first bites with gusto, letting the flavor of cooked meat enriched with spices banish the memory of raw meat, warm blood and tainted fur.

“So… what's your plan? Continue to protect this monster until it is powerful enough to not needing you anymore?” Helen asked.

“Her name is Aradra,” Luchael reiterated, “and if she wanted to hurt me she would have already done so. She's more than three times my level at this point.”

Tamara continued to eat, raising her head only occasionally to look at them since she couldn't participate in the conversation anyway even if she wanted to. Luchael seemed to have developed a more assertive personality around the time she disappeared into the depths of Sleepy Swamp, prompting her to wonder what caused that sudden change. Helen, on the other hand, seemed irritated the first time she saw her face and continued to appear so even at that moment, receiving the looks of poorly concealed contempt with indifference. Tamara was much more powerful than her, she just had to try to attack her to find out what would happen.

Why can't I think of peaceful ways to not immediately resort to violence? She thought, looking down at the stew. Her stubby fingers tightened around the spoon, playing with it absentmindedly and making her feet rise and fall just as if she were really a child, perhaps my soul and that of the salmadrer are merging faster than I thought?

“I don't understand how it's possible that I'm the only one who finds it absurd that you're walking around with a wild monster in your backpack,” Helen snorted, “right, if it was by your side with the intention of getting rid of you once it was enough powerful, it would have already done so, the fact remains that there may be other reasons for maintaining a peaceful attitude towards you."

"Like?"

“Like…” Helen brought a spoon full of stew to her mouth, “mh… you take her around the world safely and without attracting attention.”

Luchael was caught off guard, “w-well, that could be… b-but I trust her!”

“It.”

Continuing to be treated like an object and called a 'monster' began to exasperate her, she had to find a way to interrupt that debate, and she didn't have to think about it for very long: once she had finished eating, she put the bowl aside and tried to gesture towards the leporan in an attempt to make him understand that he wanted to write.

“And what does it want now? This human attitude of it is suspicious, perhaps it is trying to make us like it...?” Helen murmured, studying Tamara as if imagining that the monster would go out of control and start attacking everyone at any moment.

“She doesn't want to make us like her, she wants to write,” replied Luchael, wrinkling his nose in an annoyed manner, “but I don't have paper and chalk here with me at the moment, so…”

The leporan rubbed the ground with one foot and then grabbed one of the twigs he had gathered for the fire and handed it to Tamara.

“Are you telling me it can write??” Helen asked, rolling her eyes.

“No, at least, not yet…”

Tamara got up from the stone and approached, took the twig and began to trace some shapes on the damp earth. She couldn't write, but she could draw. After about twenty seconds, a little drawing – similar to a doodle – which presumably depicted Helen making faces and sticking her tongue out took shape. Luchael laughed while Helen turned red in the face.

“T-that's not funny!” She exclaimed, standing up suddenly, “take me seriously, you fucking beast!”

“Don't raise your voice,” said the leporan, trying to control his laughter, “you'll attract attention!”

Meanwhile, Tamara was wagging her tail under the cover of the robe that Luchael had given her, it was fun to know that she was, for once, in a position of strength. After having irritated the templar and having taken a little revenge for all the insults, Tamara moved on to serious things: she waved the tip of the stick towards the two as if it were a sword and after having cleared the ground of the previous drawing, she began to make another one.

“Um… an anvil?” Luchael wondered, “do you want to go to a blacksmith?”

“Why would a monster want to go to a blacksmith? Non-magical objects would fall around her as she reverts to her true form,” Helen sat down, moving her dark brown hair so it all fell in front of her right shoulder. “maybe it's trying to explain that good-hearted people are like an anvil on which it will bring down the hammer of its malignity one day.”

“And do you think that if it was what she wanted to do she would tell you?”

Tamara hissed and shook her head vigorously a few times, then attempted to interrupt their discussion and bring attention back to her by waving the twig before enriching the drawing with further details.

“Did you add… a fireplace?” Luchael brought a hand to cover his chin and mouth thoughtfully, “what does an anvil have to do with a fireplace?”

“It's not a fireplace,” Helen replied, “you have to look at the whole picture: an anvil and what looks like a fireplace… it's trying to talk about a forge.”

Tamara tried to smile with the limited expressive capacity that [Humanoid Form] offered her, she's a bitch, but she's good at guessing words. She thought, moving on to the next drawing.

Luchael pouted, he was taking it like a game, “ok, now he's drawing a… pot of boiling water? Maybe it's where the blacksmith dips what he forges to cool it?” The emotion was palpable in the air, the leporan wanted to score a point at all costs, not even if there was a prize up for grabs for the winner...

“This time I don't know,” Helen admitted, “come on, monster, if you want to be understood you have to try to explain yourself better,” she said with a wicked smile.

Tamara tried to contain the urge to use [Acid Spit] on the templar's feet, sighed and started drawing again in an attempt to explain herself better. Half of what it meant had been explained, now the other half was missing.

“Helen angry with the boiling water?” Luchael muttered, Helen instead missed her chance to guess and started turning red in the face with anger again, “furious Helen!”

Tamara shook her head a few times.

“Seething Helen!”

Tamara pointed the twig at the leporan and then pointed to the drawing of the forge.

“Helen is seething in a forge!” Luchael concluded, smiling full of enthusiasm, perhaps without realizing that that sentence made no sense in the context in which they found themselves.

“No, I think your monster is trying to talk about Seething Forge,” the face of the templar dressed in a pretty maid's dress was lit from below by the yellowish light of the campfire, making her look somewhat disturbing, “it's a dungeon that lies in the opposite direction from us, towards the sea coasts of the Kingdom of Heliolite.”

A dungeon? Tamara wondered mentally, perhaps the Sleepy Swamp core meant that the core of that dungeon can help me free Velen...

“Let me tell you something, Nightmare Tyrant,” Helen leaned forward towards Tamara, pressing her elbows into her knees and looking even creepier, “I don't know why you care about that dungeon, but that's a B-Rank dungeon. At your current level you too would die.”

The hope that had arisen in Tamara was extinguished in an instant; she had obtained useful information, but if she had died she certainly would not have been able to help Velen and reciprocate the help she had given her in saving her consciousness.

“I wonder why you told us this,” Luchael said, “don't you want Aradra to die?”

If it were possible, Helen would have looked even more annoyed, “it's my god's will.”

There was no time to ask further questions because one of the adventurers hired to escort the small convoy shouted, “quick, come! I found someone!”