Jay's Journey

Chapter 19

With hands bound and skin scarred, Jay walked through the forest at the Mage Hunter's pace. Surprisingly, it wasn't difficult, as the man didn't seem too accustomed to travel in the wilderness, much less a haphazard magical one. He defaulted to attempts at cutting the ample vegetation away, but it proved far too laborious. By the end of the day, the man was just as covered in scrapes as Jay was from being torn from a thorny bramble. He frustratedly built a fire of cut up wood and splinters he plucked from his own skin.

He had rations, a meager portion that he gave to Jay. It was fine though, Jay was used to getting by in the forest with relatively light meals.

Jay had attempted to work at the Omnocean a few times, but each and every time resulted in no magic and a backhand from the Mage Hunter. He got the message very quickly.

So here they were, sitting next to a fire, Jay tied with hands behind his back to a twisted tree. The Mage Hunter ate slowly, beholding the strange form of the forest around them. Finally, his gaze turned to Jay.

"How the hell did you do this?" He muttered.

"With magic." Jay replied tersely. The Mage Hunter shook his head.

"It doesn't make sense. One second, you're desperately scraping for it, the next you perform the greatest act of magic I've ever seen. And what, when you declared you're going to be a woman? Why are you all so delusional?" The Mage Hunter wondered.

"I don't know either, if that makes you feel any better." Jay retorted.

"Of course you don't, you're clueless. You 'will be a woman'? How would that work?" The Mage Hunter challenged.

"I don't know yet. That's kinda what I was trying to figure out before you decided to come along." Jay said. Maybe it was a bad idea to torment a man with a sword while he had his hands tied behind his back, but Jay hated him. He was another old idiot butting in and making life more difficult. He'd already dealt with two of those for fifteen years and already another one had come along.

"You know nothing, and yet you do something that doesn't even match up with your power. There was nothing like this where you killed that boy." The Mage Hunter observed.

"I didn't kill him! Also... mages can do things that don't match up with 'their power'." Jay said.

"Well who killed him then, and no. I've never done anything but what I'm doing now." The Mage Hunter said, demonstrating his invisible power. Now that he was paying attention, Jay realized how weak his hold was on the Omnocean. The magic was consistent, but it wasn't quite on the level of Ashe or Jay's own powers. Either the Mage Hunter was too weak to do anything other than his magical affinity, or he was completely clueless about how magic worked.

"Madame Midnight killed him. I don't know why." Jay said.

"I'm realizing you're delusional, so I can't trust half of what you say. The rest is conveniently things that you don't know. You don't know a lot of things, do you?" The Mage Hunter mocked. Jay didn't dignify it with a response.

"I bet those two bitches would have been able to get out of this, they were always good at this." The Mage Hunter muttered, his eyes back on the forest around them.

"Why didn't you keep them around, then?" Jay wondered.

"I couldn't stand them. They have no business fighting or leaving children, even those that aren't theirs, behind." The Mage Hunter answered. Jay was rapidly coming to realize that the Mage Hunter was someone he couldn't stand.

Nevertheless, this was the choice he'd made. As much as they were better suited for travel in the wilderness, Zira's teachers would still undoubtedly have trouble both tracking and keeping up with their quarry in such a place. If he had to put up with this for the rest of the long trip wherever they were going, that was fine, as long as his friends got out okay. They were fighters, one of which had magical power the Mage Hunter could no longer quell. They would make it.