Aela had once thought they might get bored of this game (and perhaps they still might). There were only so many memories that Aela had and therefore only so many shapes that Skandar could take; eventually, they would reach the end. What she hadn't anticipated was this thrill, was the way that they continued to charge their environment with their shared magic.
She can't help but smile a little up at him. His orange eyes are blazing into her own and she likes the way that he is already waiting, already expectant for some wonderful creation. Aela won't deny him that and so she begins a pattern that they both seem to enjoy: she broadcasts light, flame, explosions into his mind. One memory after the other that shines through the dark and then Skandar takes them. (She won't ever admit this to the Creator but this is her favorite part. She offers Skandar a glimpse into her mind and he makes the image into something new, something different.)
There is the familiar fluttering of his shadowy-skin as it shifts. Aela watches, fascinated with the change. Her abilities are nothing like his; but the enchantment comes from knowing that they are both so much more than they appear. Aela had asked for fire and while Skandar obliges, he comes glowing forward as Tephran lava. He changes his skin but it is done with his own flare and that is something that Aela is coming to appreciate (even if she feigns annoyance with a roll of her eyes).
He looks like a demon - with his cracked skin and the magma that illuminates them, the brilliant flickering of mane and tail - the spectacle is all the more terrifying. Aela tilts her head for a better view but the quiet approval is there, glimmering behind her shadowed eyes. Her gaze studies the curve of his shoulder and she briefly wonders what it would be like to touch him. Was he such a burning thing that she would smolder?
Briefly, her mind is a flurry of images. The oil-slick creations that linger in the shadows. The way they made some shape and yet were still without. She looks to @[Skandar] again and wonders what would happen if the skinwalker could replicate their shape. Would he lose himself in the shadows and feast upon the terror as they did? Or would they be drawn to him, understanding that he was a mimic? What would the consequences of that be?
It makes her (regretfully) refrain from continuing their current round. Her mind lingers instead on a tree that Aela had seen once. It was supposed to be as Skandar was now: burning. But since the fall of Straia, the tree remained in Pangea as a scarred symbol of what the price of ambition could be. There are had been rumors though that the magical properties of it still existed even if the former Chamber Queen did not. With Skandar serving as her own personal torch, it doesn't take them long to find it.
When they approach the scorched pine, Aela walks towards it with something akin to reverence. She had liked the painted Magician. It had been a shame for her to be swallowed as she had. Glancing back, she tries to see if Skandar remains in the shadowy distance or if he draws closer as well. Aela enjoys the flicker of his light as it illuminates across her aurelian skin - turning her an almost molten gold - and she thinks it's a fitting tribute to bring fire back to this place.
But like all Magics, this place demands a price. Aela stops and waits for Skander before she reveals it. There are more flashes - the images bright and clear despite the dark - of a deep cut that weeps blood. Of an injury on the flayed flesh of some Nerinian bystander gained during the battle and the blood that pooled below, stark on the iron granite. She looks up then from beneath her flaxen forelock - taking her turn to be expectant - to see if he understood: the tree demands blood.
They both had to bleed.
And in return, the tree might burn again.
In return, it might grant them something.
(Power.)