They'd been riding for a good hour already but it really didn't seem so, “No. But I am a sorcerer, it's just – I was thinking about that, with the demons, on horses no less. – I'm hoping that if we encounter any others the sorcery, which I'm assuming pretty strongly here is my occupation, will come back to me, in terms of slaying hastily those sacks of sinful garbage organs and ostentatious genital faces, you know – I think it would be a good thing if my abilities to – presumably/hopefully – instantaneously render them, via magic powers, flying gushing containers of disintegrating pulpy, wet-flappy organ explosions, you know, really dirty non-functioning bags that just sit there and don't hurt or annoy innocent strangers, such as ourselves – they: all the powers – kick in. That's my hope as far as the sorcery is concerned, that I'll – know, because now, I'm not a hundred percent sure.”

“About what?”

“How to do sorcery.”

They dreamed. The countryside. Dreaming. The sorcerer felt, and then immediately after ascribed this presentiment to some kind of sorcerous insight on his part, that the countryside and dreams, in fact, that they – daydreaming – responded to one another, as if in fact this was a countryside for dreaming, for dreaming across.

He felt at some point, and this was clearly merely his imagination, that his dreams, that of the Sorcerer's and the youth's, they combined, forming a mutual countryside of thoughts and reflections that they traversed; each man, only apparently in his own head, but really collaborating on a passage of scenery in the form merely of a series of images that passed through them.

The road was a kind of corridor, he felt; he certainly felt that way for reasons that weren't immediately completely clear. He was comfortable ascribing this also to a kind of sorcerous insight, on his part, that he was willing to take as read, that he apparently possessed. Ruins, on the side-horizon – if there was such a thing, what did he know, he didn't know anything – tiny, played across the side of the corridor that they in fact never left. It was merely perspective, these ruins, on the right side of him – that they were so tiny and far away. They were in fact merely images – : what a fun game to think in this fashion – that traversed across the flat wall of the corridor they were really inside, as opposed to this falling-down country road, toward a city or a prison of the lost. Or one thing that was two things. Or nothing.

And maybe that wasn't for those literally lost – he was overly literal – this character trait at least – but was in fact – was in fact for demons – for –

for who were more lost.

He'd seen demons – the Golden Bow; and he didn't think the lad was capable of exaggeration, even, let alone lying. And he clearly new his way around murdering spiritually compromised entities – given the – given his comportment, frankly, and that he'd come out of a momentous transition from nothing, perhaps, like him, immediately into a battle with a bunch of these arse-fucks and come out completely – he was holding onto his arse – unscathed.

His armour wasn't unscratched, but he himself – scatheless.

But what a fun way to think across this countryside; to dream, it was really more like dreaming, a countryside given to that, for the spontaneous generation of these kinds of dreamy thoughts.

Perhaps he should be more concerned about what awaited him. But really; traversing this corridor in his mind – his mind was prone to generating corridors, to living in these; to moving forward on a straight, path the turnings merely illusion – another mad, perhaps sorcerous reflection. – Where were these ideas coming from? And in a more than egomaniacal sense, he was actually interested, given the tenor of these reflections, to find out who he actually was.

Repeating ruins, on his right, the same trees ahead, the same dip of a cliff over far on the left; a mountain, or at least an ambitious hill – back behind, the left side of him – how long had they been riding?