Despite how long it had taken him to fall asleep, Jason woke well before sunrise. He had intended to take over the watch from Vanya who, true to her word, had stayed up all night. However, when he approached her, she firmly refused to acknowledge him.
He couldn't argue without waking Nora, so he quietly acquiesced, returning to his small lump of grass. With nothing to do and hours before sunrise, he began practicing the exercises that Vanya had taught him.
Steady breathing, in through the nose and out through the mouth. Continue with slow, steady breaths until you feel your consciousness drifting. That had sounded strange to him at the time, but as he focused on his breathing, he found it wasn't nearly as difficult as he would have thought. His thoughts slowly dwindled and even the chilly air began to bother him less.
Then he was supposed to push his consciousness out. That was a little bit abstract, but he vaguely remembered how it had felt the first time he had used magic. It had felt a little like he was pushing the mana out of his skin. He tried doing something similar, pushing; trying to imagine his mind spreading out throughout his body.
It wasn't quite what he had expected, or perhaps he wasn't doing it quite right, but he began to feel lightheaded. He felt like he might fall over from his sitting position, but when he instinctively moved to correct his position…nothing happened.
It wasn't alarming in this state. It felt more like he had tried to lift something that was heavier than he had expected. If he used a little more force then it would work, but he held back for now.
Instead, he focused on his body. He could feel the beating of his heart more intensely than he ever had before. He could almost believe that he was standing next to his heart, taking a tour of his own body.
His stomach growled, and he felt the vibrations rush through him. It was nearly overwhelming. Jason had never considered how much noise his body actually made, but now that he could hear it all…
Then he felt it. It wasn't something tangible like his heart or lungs, but it was definitely there. Similar to how he had described it earlier, it felt like an early morning dew laid across his body. It wasn't a storm like Vanya had said it should be, but it was more than he had felt before.
He tentatively reached out in his mind. He tried to nudge it just a bit, like he was shaking the water off a leaf. There was a change. Not something huge, but the mana that had been so peaceful before felt like it had been picked up by a breeze.
He pushed harder, nudged a little more, and was surprised when more and more mana was energized inside of him. There was a sort of pressure there, like it was charged with energy. He needed to release that energy or it would dissipate.
Jason imagined the man he had talked to in the city. He wasn't sure why, but he grabbed onto the image. If someone had asked him what the mason had looked like, Jason probably couldn't have given more than a rudimentary picture, but here he could see him perfectly.
He imagined the man's rough hands. He molded the image in his head and overlaid it across his own hands. Jason still had his eyes closed, but he knew that his hands would look like the mason's now.
Next, he pictured his face. Skin, darkened and slightly blotched from time spent out in the sun. A day's worth of black stubble over chapped lips. Unruly hair that fell halfway to his shoulders. He carefully worked his way through every detail, shaping it onto his own features until finally…
Jason opened his eyes and found Nora shaking him. She looked somewhat confused. "You gotta wake up, it's time to go," she was saying.
He moved his body which felt stiff. It wasn't painful soreness, and as he moved each body part, the stiffness faded almost instantly. It was almost like he was pushing life back into his body.
The sun was already peaking over the mountains, and Nora was handing him some breakfast, the same thing they had eaten yesterday. He took it, and devoured it, feeling quite a bit more hungry than he had the night before which was strange considering how he had run all day yesterday.
"Are you going to make me look funny too?" Nora asked him as he ate.
Jason looked down to see that his body had indeed changed. Just like he had imagined, his skin was rough, looking like it was permanently weathered from working with chalk like sandstone all day. Based on the girl's reaction, his face must have changed as well, and if he felt hard enough, he could feel his mana, ever so slightly more noticeable than before.
He stood up, and met Vanya's eyes as she loaded food back into her pack. "Who is that guy?" she asked, not looking particularly interested in the answer.
"Just a random guy from the village that I ran into. I stole his stuff," he said absentmindedly. He still had the belt of tools and the man's cloak in his pack. He probably should have tossed it at some point, but the weight didn't bother him and he wasn't very good at throwing things away.
"I can't imagine anyone letting you steal anything from them," she said with a laugh. He didn't laugh along. The way she said it made it clear that she meant it, and didn't find it nearly as funny as she made out.
Jason didn't argue. It probably wouldn't help if he tried to defend himself, and he didn't care to try. He had no idea what it would take to earn her respect, but he doubted that anything less than killing a bunch of humans would do it.
"Get your things, we need to get moving now."
Jason was already on top of it, tossing his pack onto his back and looking back for Nora. He was surprised when Vanya pulled out a smaller bag from her large pack and started filling it. She tossed it to Nora who just barely caught it. "Put that on, you're running with us."
Jason would have groaned in annoyance had he been her age, but Nora actually looked thrilled to not only be running by herself, but helping to carry things. She certainly was a strange child.
"We need to find water sometime today, we'll be out by this evening," Vanya said, taking off at a measured pace.
Jason and Nora followed behind. Normally running out of water would be a pretty serious thing, but Jason knew that the water itself wasn't a big deal. Finding water that didn't belong to someone already was the most important thing. He wouldn't let a random family be killed just so they could fill up their canteens.
Vanya's pace was considerably slower than yesterday. It was even slower than they had gone when they left the remains of Nora's home. She was obviously adjusting their pace to something that the girl would be able to keep with her pack.
Jason found it difficult to reconcile the vicious demon who would kill six men just so she didn't have to wait to cross the road with the demon who took obvious effort to include the teenage girl with them. It wasn't that she went easy on the girl. On the contrary, she pushed her to the limits of what she could handle, but Jason knew enough to see how significant that was.
He had done sports in high school and it was easy for a coach to just give you instructions and then wait for you to do it. It took an exceptionally caring coach to take the effort to push you all the way to your limits without demanding anymore once you got there.
Every time that Nora got to the point where she couldn't go any farther, Vanya ordered Jason to carry her, and as soon as she was rested, she was running again. He doubted that Vanya had intended to go to the effort that she was. Jason could remember how willing she had been to kill Nora on the spot.
The truth was that Nora had impressed the demon. She had an obvious respect for the girl that far exceeded what little she held for Jason himself, and Jason didn't begrudge her that.
He had never seen a child that would run herself to the brink of exhaustion over and over without a word of complaint. He would have never imagined there was a girl who could do whatever that gruesome demon funeral was for her family who had been killed in front of her only moments earlier, all without a single whimper. He couldn't fathom how she was able to smile after all that had happened, and that was before she had so easily killed the soldier.
All of those things which the demon respected, were worrying to Jason. She was strong, no doubt about that, but he worried what this kind of life would do to a child, even one as tough as her. She already showed a callousness towards human life that Jason knew he could never match. What might happen if she got any more used to it?
It was well into mid afternoon before Jason finally saw what he had hoped for. A long line of dark green in the distance. They had finally found a river. Not only that, but they were getting very close to the mountains now, and the terrain was slowly beginning to shift. The land which had been almost perfectly flat, was now more uneven, with small hills and valleys here and there. Beyond the river, the beginnings of large foothills were already coming into view.
Vanya led the group around another farmhouse, and then straight towards the river. Jason was happy that she had done a good job of avoiding civilization, though he was confused about the farms themselves. He had expected the farms to become more numerous as they got closer to the mountains. They were moving towards the capital after all, it made sense. However, if anything, the settlements were becoming more and more scarce.
Vanya slowed them to a walk as they approached the densely forested areas around the river. She scanned the area, and stepped into the trees, creating a path for Jason and Nora using her massive body. She reached the river, which was really more of a creek than anything else, and opened her mouth to speak.
She froze, eyes staring into the distance, mouth still open, and collapsed to the ground. Jason turned as he heard Nora collapsing behind him as well, before it hit him. It was like he'd been struck in the chest. He lost his breath and began falling to the ground.