At first Ashen thought, he could silently take it until he found a way out but gradually seconds began to feel like minutes as the fire blazed, hot enough to sear his skin,
Struggling to think of a way out having already cast as many spells as he could while trying to think right in the middle of being cooked alive,
Ashen twisted back and forth until he could no longer take it any longer, his uniform reacting to the flames as the helms of it slowly caught fire,
"Aaaaah…" Ashen screamed as panic gradually began to set in and every logical idea he had been trying to summon disappeared, leaving only despair and pain,
"Aaaah…," he yelled again,
Jumping out would have been the easiest thing to do but the moment he tried, the fire would instantly cling to his body until he was completely gone which was the nature of the " Ring of Fire" spell that Makin had used,
His throat was dry and sore as he began to find it difficult to swallow after exhausting himself from shouting and screaming for help,
Hope was no longer something he could envision as pain suddenly became his new best friend,
With the smell of burning hair and skin in the air, Ashen knew he didn't have long to leave and he couldn't help but think of what he would have done differently or what he could have done differently to avoid his current fate,
"If this was a book, I would definitely like to go back and start all over again," He muttered to himself, with closed eyes no longer hoping for a miracle, as he prepared himself to jump out of the circle and jump to his death,
"A quick death was definitely better than being slowly cooked in hopes that someone somewhere would save him," Ashen thought looking at the useless bracelet in his hand which he had tried burning or tossing into the fire with his arm but instead remained intact no matter what,
Weakly he prepared to step straight into the fire surrounding him and end it all as he choked on the fumes from the fire, feeling dizzy as he slowly began to lose his grasp on reality,
He raised his leg up about to throw himself straight into the fire when he suddenly felt like he was falling into it instead as everything instantly went dark with him losing the consciousness that he had been trying to hold on to,
Struggling to block out the glare of the sun from his eyes, Ashen wondered why his back felt usually cold as he slowly woke up from what seemed to be a long dream,
Jerking up in fright as he suddenly remembered the fire and how he had been stuck in it, Ashen opened his eyes, shocked to see his tattered clothes but no damaged skin whatsoever underneath them,
His skin looked even better and more vibrant than it had been since he began the test, as he looked around in front of him, not surprised to discover that there was no one there since he was convinced that the test was definitely over,
"Was it all a dream?" Ashen muttered aloud to himself even as he doubted the words he spoke, recalling the pain from the fire, the memory still strong enough to traumatic him for year's to come,
"A Dream? Are you blind? I spend almost my entire mana reserves to heal you and instead of a thank you, you start hallucinating? Did the smoke from the fire cause permanent damage to your brain too?" Came a tiny voice from behind him as a tiny winged creature came to stand in front of him with red eyes burning with intensity even as it seemed like it was about to fall over,
Resisting the urge to chuckle as the voice and the body in no way matched the words that he heard,
"Who are you?" Ashen curiously asked,
"What are you?" The tiny creature fired right back,
"All I know is that the green shell has been my home until it broke and I popped out," The winged creature slowly decided to explain before waiting for his own answers,
"My name is Ashen and someone gave me the egg...the green shell you came from," He also explained looking at the tiny creature who seemed to be the only reason he was still alive,
"So what now?" The creature spoke again,
"I need to restore the mana I lost to grow and you obviously are clueless about what I am so we might as well go back to the academy," the creature said jumping on Ashen's laps right before curling itself with its wings as it made to go to sleep,
"How do you know about the academy?" Ashen asked in shock, surprised that whatever was born from the egg was not only an intelligent creature but a powerful one too,
"Magic and I might have checked your brain to ensure that it remained in prime condition and please...cough...talking makes me weary," It spoke switching its way of talking to that of an old man, shutting Ashen up the moment she sensed that he was about to speak,
"OH...and you call me green until I find a more suitable name for myself," the tiny and red-like creature said right before it began making sleepy noises that sounded more like flute sounds,
"They do say not to look a gift horse in the mouth," Ashen sighed seeing the harmless and small creature he lifted up in his hands right before getting as he began to look in all directions with no clue whatsoever of which way to go.