Alia stared at him, she had been in the midst of trying to put together a reply, yet it seemed like it would never come.
August smiled, adding another small victory against the redhead to his personal memory, then said once more.
"I'm offering you a suit of armor, are you going to take it or not? If you really want to get stabbed you could say that too though."
Alia took the aura mold in her hands and looked at him, then asked.
"Is it even possible for me to use this?"
She was right in her thought process, August had almost no idea of she could use it, but he was willing to test it.
The wording of the world forge seemed to deliberately include what it referenced as permitted persons, which was more than enough reason for August to at least try.
Alia may have been extremely sturdy, but her body was not invincible, the dried blood on her skin was evidence of that. Though, now her body showed little to no signs of damage.
It seemed to him as if she had a regenerative ability of sorts, well, recent events suggested he may have one as well.
He had noticed that his arm – no longer in the makeshift sling because of his armor, was almost totally healed, it had even relocated itself– or that might have been Alia. August also realized that his body was devoid of pain, and in only a few days at that.
There were many changes happening to his body, though he was not sure to what extent they had truly reached.
Putting his thoughts aside, he returned to his conversation with Alia.
"Why not try?" He asked her.
The redhead sighed, then squeezed the orb.
"What do I do?" She replied.
August took a second to think of how he would describe the feeling, then gave up and decided upon a more straightforward explanation.
"Just… try and turn it into whatever you imagine I guess" He smiled pathetically.
The redhead blinked twice, then sighed and closed her eyes.
Within a few seconds, a yellow screen popped up in front of him.
At this point, August was becoming used to the sudden pop ups. He nodded and then responded.
"Allow use"
August watched as a flowering yellow light bloomed above Alia, falling down to the ground before expanding out. Strings of glowing yellow light stretched out, encompassing the area around her and enclosing her in a transparent yellow hologram.
'So that's what it looks like.'
Alia opened her eyes, then got up and walked towards a holographic mannequin that was set up inside the hologram. Perplexed on why there was no suit of armor adorning it, he decided to ask.
"Why is there nothing there?"
The redhead scratched the back of her head then chuckled nervously, smiling at him then replying.
"When it comes to picturing, I'm not the best, so I guess it opened anyways?"
August shook his head and shrugged.
"Have fun with that, seems like it may take a while. I'll go… take a walk or something."
She waved him off without saying a word, and August took that as permission to go.
Turning away and waking though the exit, he noticed how much more difficult it really was to move. Even though he had intentionally made the armor as light as possible, it still came out to be nearly thirty pounds in weight from what he could tell.
Luckily, the weight was spread out through his entire body, making his movement more uncomfortable than difficult.
Walking out into the burnt remains of the forest, he tried to move his now free arms. He was in a world of pain, but his injuries did not seem to get worse.
After looking around, August deemed that this was a good enough place to begin testing a few things.
The first thing he did was attempt to turn his armor back into the secondary form.
"Secondary Form" he said out loud.
Nothing happened, and August was quite confused. After some consideration, he started to think about it in detail.
'My ability doesn't seem to respond to commands as much as my actual will, so maybe…'
He thought about the feeling of summoning and unsummoning his weapons, then tried to apply that very same feeling to his armor, and then he ran into another problem.
At this point, August had not thought about the act of Summoning his weapons in a long time. Each time he wished for one to be there, it was just so.
In fact, after the first few instances of doing so, most of his abilities had become nothing more than an instinctual habit. It was as if he had been doing it his entire life.
He found it strange that his newly acquired gift could simply become a mundane feeling. He had always dreamt of the ability to do the supernatural, to be a wondrous being that couldn't be comprehended by such things as logic and reason.
But now, even his supernatural ability has become naught more than logical and reasonable. Just another thing he was able to do.
So he willed it, and he was suddenly standing around in a grey sweater and sweatpants. There was no awe or spectacle, what was supposed to be done was done. Even the yellow flash no longer appeared.
"It is rather quick to be uncaring, it's almost disappointing."
And it was, August continously shifted his armor between both forms, sometimes there was a flash of light, others, there was not.
It was truly saddening, to watch his awe inspiring power become nothing more than part of his mundane existence.
It was as if the very magic of it all was stripped away, leaving him nothing but another boy who had powers.
And yet he carried on, turning his armor into it's first form and walking off into the burnt wasteland.