What Just Happened?

Bjorn was only barely aware of the wetness on his face. In fact, the wetness wasn't the reason he noticed it. What he noticed was the small swirl of energy that came along with it. It wasn't much, but to Bjorn it was like a surprise oasis in the middle of the desert.

He grabbed onto it, pulling the energy, taking it for himself. He was hardly even conscious of what he was doing until he opened his eyes and saw what the "energy source" was.

He used the burst of energy to flip the switch on the mine in his hand and he pulled himself back from Torgon.

The horse kicked in annoyance at being ignored, but it couldn't be helped. Bjorn had very little mana of his own at the moment and stealing the horse's was intoxicating. It made him stronger, but it could easily exhaust the horse to death if he wasn't careful.

He blinked his eyes quickly to get used to the daylight, and wiggled his arms and legs to get his blood pumping again. The sun was only just now beginning to set which meant he had only been out for an hour or two at the most. How had he gotten here anyway?

He was right on the edge of the tree line, but it looked to be a different place than where he had gone in to check on that odd man. He was so tired he wondered if it hadn't just been a dream, but it had been too vivid. That and how else could he explain a mana mine in his hand.

No, it had all happened, there was no doubt of that. What he couldn't understand was how he was still alive. The man, Jason, had tossed him the mana mine, somehow already activated, and he had just picked it out of the air like a light cursed fool.

In the seconds before he had lost the ability to think, he had been sure that he was going to die. That female demon had been strong. Strong enough that he had been worried about how he would finish her off without even considering the man.

Had the man held back the demon? They were traveling together and Jason, if that was his real name, had seemed genuinely concerned for her. And he was a wielder of illusion magic!

It wasn't an unbelievable revelation. It was painfully obvious in hindsight, but back in the moment he hadn't really had the privilege of thinking much while fighting the demon. It was still shocking though. There was only one other known illusion magic master in the entirety of Selevas. There could be more, but the lot of them were notoriously difficult to pin down for obvious reasons.

That meant that he was almost certainly born with the talent. Of all the magical disciplines, illusion magic was by far the most difficult to gain an affinity for the hard way.

Bjorn racked his brain trying to think back to what had happened. If he was really a Savant then he should have other affinities as well, but try as he might he couldn't think of any other magic that Jason had definitely used. He hadn't even shown any strength or durability, which were all but given for most people.

He gave up, unable to come up with anything. If he really was a master of illusion magic then Bjorn really shouldn't even be trusting what he had seen anyway. Had the demon been real or just a creation? If that demon, strong as she was, was an illusion then Jason would have to be as powerful as…

No, it didn't add up. The only reason that he would employ such an overly complicated and frankly overkill strategy like that would be…what? To confuse him? If it was to gain his trust or something then he wouldn't have needed to pull the trick he had done with the mine.

If there was a reason then it would take a far more devious man than Bjorn Haverthall to figure it out. He would just have to assume that he had fought a real demon back there. Though, to be fair, that was just as bewildering a prospect.

Bjorn sat up, giving Torgon a pat on the head, and then moved over so he could lean against a tree. Jason had seemed so honestly concerned about his "wife and daughter," when they had first met. It was difficult to see him as some kind of mastermind.

If he was then wouldn't Bjorn have ended up either dead or enslaved? Try as he might to think of some kind of nasty motive for Jason, he couldn't come up with anything. Was he just using me to heal his companions? It wasn't ridiculous to think that he couldn't use energy magic, and just couldn't do it himself.

Jason had to be the reason that he was still alive right now. He somehow has the demon under control, he thought. The demon was under his control, but he lost control of her when she woke up. Then, he managed to hold her back before she could kill me. That was all he could come up with, and that was without even considering the little girl which he didn't even want to think about. Maybe she actually was his daughter?

So now the question was why a wielder of illusion magic was traveling with a pet demon. He stood, feeling his mana steadily return, and pulled out some food from Torgon's saddlebags. What was he supposed to be doing? He needed to help the world prepare for the coming war. It was tough to say when it would come, but clearly it would be sooner than later.

But if he tried to do anything then he would probably get caught and executed before he could kill a single demon. Deep down, he wanted nothing more than to hunt down this abomination of a hero and make him suffer for what he had done to the king.

That was just wishful thinking though. The hero was far too powerful for him to take on his own, and more importantly, as horrible of a man as he was, the world needed him. Humanity couldn't hope to push back the demons again without the hero. Bjorn had to put his personal feelings behind the needs of the world.

Still, he should have seen what would happen. Screw his insistence that it was part of the ceremony to behead the previous hero. There probably hadn't been any left alive who had witnessed the last hero transition aside from the Battle Queen herself, but there was no record of that ever happening, and Bjorn couldn't imagine Elizabeth el'Straya beheading the previous hero.

He hoped that it was just some kind of macabre joke, but a part of him worried that the Battle Queen had put up a fight. If that were the case…

Regardless, he would have to leave the war to this hero. His stomach turned at the mere thought of him. Bjorn had intended to search for…

Bjorn pulled his sword out from where it hung on Torgon's side. A mounted figure was approaching, and he had been too caught up in his own thoughts to notice.