Despite Jary’s misgivings, they make good time, especially when he’s the one carrying Raim. Jary finds himself strangely resistant to vampiric energy drain. He has a theory for why this is so, and does his best to play up his fatigue in front of Gin. Wouldn’t do to have him suspicious.

He does, however, try to carry Raim most of the time. He explains it to Gin as only fair - it’s Jary’s fault that Raim is currently dead to the world.

In more ways than one, Jary thinks bitterly.

His spell took more out of the vampire than it should have, which is something Jary must think about. The trap was based on his recent research, true, but he didn’t craft it with vampire hunting in mind. It was a side project to distract him on those evenings when he felt like burning down all of his findings.

Most of the time is still about four hours a day that Jary can stand of direct contact with Raim. It’s a problem. His exhaustion mounts as the days pass. Once they are down to only a couple of hours of travel a day, they will be in trouble.

“So how did you find yourself on the shit list of Ajalin mage hunters?” ask Gin one evening in camp, tone conversational.

Jary’s concentration pops like a bubble, and the little flame he’s been trying to get going fizzles out. They are taking the route near the coast, where there are few trees or bushes, and so little dry wood to burn. Jary could waste a spell to keep them all warm at night, but he doesn’t want to. Even though Raim’s company leaves him cold and shaky.

“I told you I escaped from the College,” he replies.

“Yeah, but you didn’t say why. Judging by the fight you put up, you weren’t just a student.”

Does he play up his importance or keep his cards close to his chest?

“I gave lectures on spell crafting,” Jary answers truthfully.

“Oh yeah? That trap you said my friend fell into was your design?”

“Yes.”

“Any idea how long he’ll be out, then, master spellcrafter?”

Jary’s teeth clench on an angry retort. He exhales through his nose.

“He should not have been affected like this.” Admitting that his spell wasn’t perfect, and to Gin of all people, hurts Jary’s pride.

Gin’s eyes, already slanted thanks to his Gatan heritage, narrow into slits. “So. He could be dying, for all you know?”

“I doubt I’ve invented a way to kill vampires by accident.”

“Yeah, probably not.” Gin sighs, looking over to where they’ve propped Raim against a tree, a small distance from the camp. “Carrying him makes us slow. Hunters might catch up.”

They crossed the border the day before, so they should be safe, Jary hopes. It was tricky. Carrying an unconscious vampire through a toll gate was out of the question. They ended up going across a river in the most secluded spot they could find. Jary still doesn’t feel completely dry.

“I could try to wake him up,” he says. “But I think you would be opposed to me experimenting on your friend.”

“Damn right. How about a regular healing spell?”

“You know they don’t work on vampires any different than just feeding them magic, right?”

“Yep. Interesting that you know that.”

Jary swears under his breath. Of course he fell into that trap. What made him think he could do this one thing right?

He levels an unimpressed glare at Gin. “I told you I was a spellcrafter, didn’t I? I’ve always thought that vampires are a tragically unexplored subject in magical research. You could say they are superior to us, and whether or not that’s true, their use of magic is different from ours on a very basic level. Now, I can’t tell you what the difference is, exactly, but I hope one day I might.”

“How many vampires have you met?” Gin sounds suspicious, but hopefully for the wrong reasons.

“Very few. How many of those do you think agreed to help me?”

“None.”

“Exactly. A good excuse for my lack of progress, I’d say.”

Gin laughs and it doesn’t sound forced. Jary might still be in the clear. The conversation, at least, is over.

Feeling more than a little unsettled, Jary gives up on subtlety and just lets the sad pile of twigs and leaves burst into flame, wasting flammable material, but saving time and his sanity. He crouches there for a bit, twitching, then finally lets himself go and take a good look at Raim.

He hasn’t changed one bit, physically. Same pale skin and straw-coloured hair. Same sharp features. Jary resists the urge to touch his own face. What he looks like doesn’t matter.

Maybe it’s better that his ginger hair curls like crazy in humid conditions and that his freckles pull attention away from his eyes. They say the eyes are a window to one’s soul, and people getting glimpses of that is the last thing Jary wants.

*

They last about another week before they decide to stop avoiding the inevitable and take a longer rest. Neither of them is excited at the thought of walking into a town with an unresponsive vampire, so they set up camp on a small river island.

“You really need to figure out what’s keeping him under,” says Gin, jumping down from a tree after stashing Raim safely among the branches. “We’ll never get to Wyrn at this rate.”

“We will,” grumbles Jary, once again trying to start a fire in the most efficient way possible.

“I didn’t sign up for spending weeks of my life with you.”

Jary bares his teeth. “I could leave.”

“Definitely didn’t sign up for your attitude.”

Jary reaches deep into himself for some store of long-forgotten patience. Doesn’t find it. “And I don’t intend to put up with yours! There’s nothing in it for me except stupid, unnecessary risk, and yet here I am, helping you, out of the goodness of my heart!”

“Out of guilt, more like.”

Gin’s tone - perfectly calm, maybe even a bit bored - is more infuriating than his words could ever be. Jary can feel the firestorm roiling under his skin, notes with a detached sort of acceptance that he has to release it, or it will curdle his blood and sear his bones.

He gathers the crude, impromptu spell, forms his palms into a triangle. He watches Gin ready himself for a fight.

At the last moment, just as he’s releasing the fire, Jary aims it at the tree.

Two things happen at once. The tree is hit with a pillar of flames that engulf it, eat at it, are likely to spread into a forest fire if left unchecked. Jary takes a punch to the stomach from Gin and falls to his knees, gagging, forehead pressing against the dirt.

“What did you do?” Gin asks, voice shaking with fury now that his antagonising might have caused harm to Raim.

Jary coughs, drooling a little. “Tried something,” he manages.

Gin grabs him by the collar and pulls him up, one-handed, until Jary’s feet are off the ground. Jary tries to ignore it, focusing instead on the heat buffeting him from behind. His arms hang at his sides, but he moves his palms and he focuses. The heat disappears. Gin drops Jary in favour of running towards the tree.

Jary turns around, not picking himself off the ground, to watch. The tree is a charred mess, and so is all the nearby foliage, but Raim looks only a little soothy.

Gin puts a hand to his neck. “He’s warm.”

“Absorbing a fire spell of that magnitude would do that,” Jary tells him.

“Well, it didn’t wake him up.”

“No, but it tells us that this isn’t about magic deficiency.” Jary runs his palms, also hot to the touch, over his face. “It’s a mental thing. He’s… trapped in his mind or something. Probably.”

Gin slips off the tree and approaches him. “You don’t sound very sure.”

Jary glares up at him. “Excuse me for not having all the answers. Look, this isn’t just my doing. Does--does your friend have any reason to, uh, get stuck in his head?”

That’s enough to make Gin deflate and drop his gaze. “Stuck how?”

“I don’t know. He could be dreaming, or just not aware. Point is, I think he’s locked in his own mind and we need to reach him somehow to get him out.”

They are quiet for a moment. Then Gin sighs. “First thing we need to do is move away from your giant smoke signal.”

Jary shrugs and gathers his belongings. They don’t go far, neither of them up to carrying their dead weight vampire, but they find another suitable tree. They sleep without a fire. Jary glares daggers at Gin, who doesn’t even have the decency to shiver, before he drifts off.

He wakes up sometime in the middle of the night, cold and stiff. He contemplates his options and eventually picks himself up and heads for a nearby creek. It’s a longer walk than he expected, but at least it warms him up a little. He drops to his knees by the water and splashed his face, then spends a moment failing to catch his reflection.

What is he even trying to do? If they reach Wyrn, Gin will probably drag him to a meeting with Lutila, maybe some of the others from the House, and that’s too risky. Jary has to bring Raim back to consciousness before then. That’s the only way Gin might let him slink off.

Jary sighs. He holds both hands above the water, fingers splayed and thumbs touching. Water bubbles up and swirls around to form the lines and planes of a familiar face. Raim looks good translucent.

Examining his emotions brings Jary to a somewhat puzzling conclusion. Worry, old affection, a touch of annoyance. Obligation. Hope and a whole lot of sadness. Not what he expected, but maybe he’s just tired.

He ignores a splash to his left, but the second one makes him turn his head and - there’s a man standing in the creek, the water almost up to his rolled-up trousers.

He blinks at Jary, smiles and says, “neat trick.”

Smooth voice, humour in the inflection. Jary’s concentration breaks and Raim’s face pours back into the creek.

The man is shirtless and conveniently backlit by the moonlight reflected in the water. Long hair frames his face like spilled ink. He’s built similarly to Jary - efficiently muscled, but softer where it doesn’t matter. Black tattoos snake across his torso and circle his neck, marking him as a potentially dangerous spellslinger. His neatly trimmed beard reminds Jary that his own scruff is probably nothing to scoff at after weeks on the road.

It might be a trick of the moonlight, but his eyes are practically yellow. Moonlight, or the man is a demon.