Jay's Journey

Chapter 23

This was the stupidest shit Vayen had ever done. That was a tall title, as he was well aware he was far from the sharpest tool in the shed. Only, this hadn't been his idea and he was barely on board with it. It was Zira's idea. Zira! She was way too smart to plan up something like this. Or maybe she wasn't and Vayen just loved her too much.

They had to wait a while because he got fucking stabbed and wasn't in any condition to travel. It was around a week, and even when they finally started walking, Zira constantly had to wait on Vayen and take breaks far more often than normal. The stitches were still in, and they constantly pulled painfully when he stood up straight. That was one thing he had to say Zira was bad at, sewing. Jay did a much better job under worse circumstances.

Since they had no clue where Jay was and didn't have any leads, they had to get desperate. As such, they were here, dressed in silly ass robes chanting a whateverthefuck to Madame Midnight! What kind of dumbass would follow her? There were at least three stories about her tricking people and killing them. There were several more about people getting fucked over by pacts they made with her.

Vayen had literally pretended to not be able to speak because he couldn't act to save his life. It was really funny because the cult leader claimed to have spoken with Madame Midnight in a vision but the thing he described didn't even look like her. Vayen had to check with Zira to make sure that different people didn't see her differently, but they both saw the same thing. Maybe she changed her appearance in the cult leader's vision, but more likely the guy was spouting off a bunch of bullshit.

Anyways, the ritual. Zira was actually doing it on the off chance that it worked because the two of them had no better ideas because Madame Midnight had definitely been following Jay. The chanting was getting louder and louder, and Vayen was finding it more and more difficult to not laugh. It was just so fucking funny for no reason at all.

"Madame Midnight we gotta get Jay, get your ass over here." Vayen cursed beneath his breath, making sure nobody saw him speaking. Shit, Jay's specific combination of fearlessness and stupidity was rubbing off on him. Well, there were worse influences out there.

The chant reached a climax, the dark pool in the center of the room hadn't moved at all where Madame Midnight would supposedly emerge in "glorious darkness". She didn't. The cult leader lectured them for not being devoted enough to him or something. Vayen didn't care, he just wanted to reconvene with Zira to talk about what they were doing next.

He didn't have to wait too long as they exited the ritual room through various hallways, him and Zira were thankfully alone.

"Fuck do we do now?" Vayen asked.

"I really don't know. We may just have to search for Jay ourselves without any leads." Zira said. As stupid as the whole cult thing was, Vayen knew they were desperate and the idea at least made a bit of sense. Getting a hold of Madame Midnight made sense anyway. Doing it through a cult kind of threw the whole thing off.

Hold on, it was night, but when did it get so fucking dark? Vayen looked around. Where did all the stars go? The moon was still there but it was shrinking. How was it doing that? Was something in that weird incense the cult had been burning?

Zira put her hand on Vayen's shoulder.

"I don't think the ritual worked, but this seems like her handiwork." Zira said. Vayen's eyes widened. She was right, this was the kind of shit that came with Madame Midnight. What if she wasn't there to talk about Jay? What if this was like one of those stories where they had to argue their way out of being magically murdered? Vayen couldn't remember what day looked like anymore, but he sure did miss it. Would he never see it again?