“Ok, so what you’re telling me is that we need to go somewhere, hit someone, and then we can all go home?” Jonatan’s ability to listen was as sharp as ever.

The blank stares of his new travelling companions did little to enlighten him. Jasper stood up from the now ashen campfire, taking in a deep breath, and walking over to a nearby tree, gently resting his head against it. His shoulders were shaking, though whether out of laughter, anger, or crying was rather unclear. Mathilda’s look of sheer exasperation told him all he needed to know.

“No, not even slightly close to what I just said.” She rubbed her temples, a laugh of disbelief escaping her lips.

“He’s right though.” Jasper whispered, now clutching his shaking head.

“How is he right about comparing a delicate operation where we restore the name of a millennia old organisation while evading the close knit, equally old organisations that want you all dead and defaced, the same thing as hitting your problems away?” Mathilda looked at Jonatan like he was a strange beast performing carnival tricks. It’s a very specific look that he was strangely used to at this point from drunken passer-by’s, and his father.

“I think I did ok.” Jonatan pouted. “Besides, up until recently my life consisted of childhood weight training, drunken brawls, singing and talking my way out of fights, I’m not a fast learner when it comes to history!” Jonatan chose not to disclose that he talked his way into fights more often than not.

“I don’t think we can drill him like a normal person, Mathilda.” Jasper returned to the circle, the sunset making his hair seem to shimmer. “Let me give it a try.” Mathilda relented, falling on her back, and staring at the sky.

“Ok Jonatan. Look at me and listen very carefully.”

“If you’re going to give me a lecture about why I should be more attentive and serious in these difficult situations, then I can guarantee I’ll lose you in the first ten seconds.” Jonatan crossed his arms defiantly.

“Leave the planning to us, just hit who we tell you to hit and don’t start needless fights. Do what you always do but not standing out as much, unless the swords come out. Or else I’m taking your alcohol.” Jasper’s eyes were blank and unmoving.

“Ok.” Jonatan nodded in complete understanding of the gravity of the situation.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Mathilda rolled over and planted her face in the leaves.

“So…where we going first?” Jonatan stood up, stretching, cracking several parts of his body that he didn’t know had joints in the process.

“I. Just. Told. You.” Mathilda quietly sobbed into the ground at the sheer idiocy of the situation. “There’s a village by the end of the forest that used to house a branch of the College of Whispers. Assuming they’re not all dead, they might help us.”

“We’re going to Cloudstrip?!” Jonatan immediately leapt to his feet and lifted Matilda straight off the ground, much to her surprise. “That place is heaven!”

“You’ve been there before?” Jasper shouldered his pack, stamping out the tiny embers of the fire.

“I spent almost a month there last year! That place has the biggest tavern on this side of the country, not to mention the brewery of the most famous ale in the world! And then there’s the alleyways, a net of tunnels so amazing that you could get lost in their for three days with nothing but a lute and a naked centaur called Chaz and—”

“Ok we get the point.” Matilda made a face before leaping deftly off Jonatan’s overexcited shoulder. “I’m glad to see you know the place at least. Just don’t get lost please.”

“Don’t worry, I got used to the layout after day two, the last day was just trying to lead Chaz to where he hid his clothes from a hoard of rats.” Jonatan nodded. He was an expert in this area.

“Thank you for that terrifyingly vivid description.” Jasper eyed Jonatan’s face with a slight twinge of worry. “I’ve never heard of a group there, are you sure we can trust that information?”

“There’s an innkeeper about half a day’s travel north of here who I’ve kept close contact with. He’s been here for longer than I’ve been alive, I trust his word with my life.” Matilda shouldered her bow, leading the way into the maze of trees ahead of them. “I need to check in on him first though, there’s no telling those wizard folks will do for information.”

“Do you mean Maclive?” Jonatan grimaced.

“Of course, you would know every inkeep and bartender around here.” Jasper rolled his eye. “You drink him dry or something?”

Jonatan saw back to that day, and could barely hold back his tears. He still felt the bruises he got that day, nor the ungodly screams of the local cattle that he may or may not have completely accidentally let out from their pen, which may or may not have resulted in many golds’ worth of damages, and may or may not have been the reason he was held in a jail cell for a week or so.

“No, nothing at all. In fact, he’s known me a long time too.” Jonatan held his side, Maclive’s mean right hook still aching his ribs. “Did…he ever mention me?” He eyed Matilda sheepishly, only to realise that she had stopped moving.

She seemed bolted to the ground, her ears twitched and her eyes scanned the horizon with a steely frown creeping onto her face.

“Someone summoned something, just shy of a mile to the south of us.” She slowly lowered herself to her knees, removing her bow from her back.

“More wizards?” Jasper took a knee and drew his blades in one swift, silent motion, following Matilda’s lead in scanning the forest ahead of them.

“I can’t tell, but I can only feel one of them. Something big?”

“If it’s only one then isn’t that closer to that big dog wolf thingy than the owl barrage from before?” Jonatan wondered aloud. Jasper and Matilda both looked up at him with raised eyebrows. He dropped to his knees as well to try and blend in with them better.

“That’s actually a fair point, they can’t keep that many eyes open at once for long so they’d have to keep summoning more. The Clerics then?” Jasper inquired, earning a nod from Matilda.

“If they’re this far into the forest then it’s safe to assume that it’s not just a solitary party. We should go quiet, move away from them before they find where we camped.”

“Am I the only one wondering how they found us in the first place? I thought we didn’t leave footprints with that cool twig trick of yours?”

“If there’s one thing you need to learn about Wizards, it’s that there’s no bottom to their bag of tricks.” Jasper’s gaze darted from shadow to shadow ahead of them, searching for any tiny indication of threat. “There’s no group better at divination, which means there’s no real way to escape them in the end.”

Jonatan had had enough of Jasper’s rosy information for one kneeling session, so he returned to his feet and started walking in the direction he assumed was south.

“What are you doing? I haven’t cast any stealth spells for us yet!” Mathilda seemed offended.

“Well, they’d only track us with that divi-whatsit anyway right? Let’s just forget about being quiet and run like maniacs, at least that way we might get a head start.” Jonatan kicked a twig into a nearby hedge, impatience gnawing at him like ants on a picnic.

“That’s not how you get out of situations like these!” Mathilda stood up, her watch on the horizon ceased due to an apparent need to correct him.

“Normally I’d agree with you completely, Mathilda.” Jasper returned his blades to his belt, satisfied that the threat was not within stabbing distance currently. “That being said, do you really think they’d expect to have to track us normally?”

Mathilda folded her arms, her face deep in a scowl as she ran several thoughts through her head with increasing irritation that she was the one being corrected. Jonatan suddenly had a whiff of inspiration, which would boost this irritation by several orders of magnitude.

“When you last saw Maclive, did he still have five dozen cows on his farm?”

“Uh, I think it’s eight now.” Mathilda blinked a few times, her mind not following the same train of thought that Jonatan was laying out. “Why, are you going to ask him to ride them out of here or something ridiculous?”

“Not really no.” A smile crept across his face as he pictured something that could only be described as chaotic destruction. “Say, Jasper, do you think those Wizards could still do their tracking spells in the middle of a stampede?”

Jasper opened his mouth to answer, but stopped when he saw Jonatan’s smile, and decided it would be best not to fuel this idea any further. Mathilda, however, chose exactly the words he was looking for.

“Oh, he is going to kill you if you try that.”

*****

The farmhouse was nothing too special to look at, partially camouflaged in the trees save for the ridiculously large pen full of equally absurdly large cows staring in various directions with their usual disinterest in anything that isn’t grass. Some of them seemed to take an interest in Jasper’s hair, which he was more than a little uncomfortable with.

Mathilda walked up to the door with a mix of trepidation and haste, looking back to Jonatan with a stern gaze before knocking as loud as she could on the hardwood. Several agonizing seconds ticked by, a chill passing Jonatan’s neck as he pictured what they could have done to him for knowing his family, for possibly aiding the escape of two ‘evil fugitives’.

“Ah be ‘ight ‘ere.” A breath escaped all three of their lungs, but a twang of fear perked back up in Jonatan’s mind, as he knew what was coming next.

The door heaved open on two barely hanging hinges, a fiery red arm with just as much muscle as scars over it forcing it open with seeming ease. He was near eight feet tall of crimson gruffness, a set of glowing purple eyes that bore holes of judgement into everything. More intimidating were the two gnarled horns atop his head, larger than usual for tieflings of his age, though that might just be because he never filed them down.

More intimidating still was the mound of black hair that hung on his head, like a thorn bush clinging to a very angry boar, doing nothing to hide his general disdain for leaving the house, but everything to hide if he was about to tear you in half at any given moment.

Then he did something that shocked Jonatan to his core.

A warm smile spread across the gappy expanse of his mouth, and he scooped Mathilda off her feet and gave her a back breaking hug.

“Aw ya dear wee thing, ‘a didnae ‘hink ‘ad see y’ere fae months!” Mathilda frantically tapped his arms, her cheeks tinting blue for a moment before Maclive set her down to catch her breath, a laugh hearty in his chest.

“Translate please?” Jasper whispered to Jonatan in as subtle a manner as he could manage.

“Hello.”

Maclive raised his gaze to Jasper, giving him a short wave in an awkward attempt to be polite. He was about to offer the same to Jonatan, but then he stopped, recognizing his face, and narrowing his eyes with a look he was all too familiar with.

“Mr Maclive, we apologise for dropping in on you with no notice.” Mathilda wheezed, taking a deep breath to compose herself. “However, given the current circumstances, we had no other options but to—”

“No, ‘a get it.” His eyes never broke from Jonatan’s. “Jonny boy.”

“Hello, Maclive.” Jonatan waved, a sheepish smile on his face. He knew better than to try to reason Maclive out of what he was thinking.

“Oh aye, ‘a jus’ remember tha’ ya left somethin’ ‘ere last time ya visited.” He jabbed his finger at Jonatan, then stormed back into the house, ignoring Mathilda’s attempts to regain his attention before the door slammed shut.

Mathilda and Jasper turned to Jonatan with a disappointed look, Mathilda’s face in her hands.

“Nothing happened huh?” Jasper raised an eyebrow, his head shaking at yet another Jonatan related obstacle. Jonatan turned his head to Jasper slowly, smiling at him.

“I’d take a few steps to the side if I were you.” Jasper looked confused for a moment, but took a step back from Jonatan anyway.

When Jonatan turned back to the door, it was open again. Maclive was standing in the doorway, holding something. It was only after he’d thrown it straight at Jonatan’s face that he recognized one of the local carpenter’s folding lounge chairs. From his experience being his with them, they were always more solid than they looked.

This one was no exception.