Jace

Why did Alex not use that spell from the start?

I have never seen Alex cancel magical darkness before despite encountering similar forms of magical darkness to the darkness I produced using that one funny rock yesterday. What, did he learn that spell in the moment? No, that would not make any sense. Maybe his personality shift is connected? Two forms of mental alteration being connected would make sense in most cases.

Well, regardless, I need to get as far from where I fought the Wanderers as possible.

Wait wait wait, no, that isn't... wow... unfortunately my eyes didn't deceive me. The next few pages of the journal were torn out. I wonder why Jace would feel the need to do such a thing...

Thanks to Twi's mildly concerning magic goop, I was able to incapacitate my former friends with relative ease, but every time I face them there is a chance that they will weaken me in some way. So long as I'm unable to muster up the required resolve to end my friends, I'll never be able to truly subdue them. How did they find my location so quickly anyways? I mean, I was being extremely cautious and yet I was barely able to prepare in time to counter their assault. I suppose I'll just have to ask Quartz about it later.

Now, where should I head off to next? One of the keeps? Another country? One of the three keeps in another country? What countries would I be able to enter anyways? Actually, now that I think about it, most countries nowadays don't really focus too heavily on border security due to the natural geographical borders which inevitably became the absolute dividers between the countries of the mainland. Wait, what would Yore be classified as? I don't think the island is registered as territory of the Kingdom of Amity, and none of the other nations are near enough to be concerned with Yore... why am I thinking about this? Focus, focus! Your life is literally at stake here, me! You've got to think about the issues at hand! Why am I still writing all of this?!

Ah, those thoughts don't need to be known. If you're reading this, please don't think too hard about the missing pages.

Even more pages appear to have been torn out of the journal, but the edges of where these pages were torn are far more jagged. Maybe he was in a hurry when he tore them out? Regardless, the fact that pages are missing is already an immensely important issue.

Quartz, if you would, please get together as many capable people as you can that are available to help search the route from Mount Ire's nameless villages to Flengriam for these torn pages. So long as they haven't been burried or completely decomposed, there's still a chance of recovering them.

Time is ticking, and the probability of finding even a single page drops more and more every second that passes. HellOOOOoooo? GET A MOVE ON IT!!!

Jace

Damn it all, I didn't think they'd go this far. Quartz may be a natural orator, but Alex is something else. He doesn't speak to crowds; he controls them. Alex can quickly find and exploit the desires of individuals and mobs, and this alone makes him the second largest threat to my well-being out of all of the Wanderers. Since I've currently got Quartz under control, he is the biggest threat to my safety out of all the Wanderers. What I don't understand is how he beat me to Flengriam without a horse. There's no way Hazel could have recovered that quickly naturally after overexerting herself to the extreme extent that would be necessary to cross from Yore to the mainland with nonstop flight magic, right? I could've sword that such a feat would be impossible for her.

Whatever method the Wanderers used to get here aside, I've got to deal with the raging mob outside the room.

...

I have no idea how to deal with the raging mob outside this room.

...

...

...

Well, this situation sucks for me specifically.

I'm going to attempt something a little risky for my liking. Of course, I'm not stupid—I'll take contermeasures beforehand to prevent any of the worst possible outcomes should I fail. I've just got to hope that this honey-like liquid in one of the test tubes I took from Dr. Collagen's now uninhabited tower of ice is the liquid I think it is. There's no way to be certain though, so I'll just have to hope it works. If only he hadn't fooled me, I wouldn't be in this situation in the first place...

If only I had gotten a glipse of his face... I would have be able to end this right here and now...

Ah, and if I knew what magic he cast on my friends with absolute certainty then I could fix this...

No, no, what am I saying; I don't have time to waste with fantasies of what could have been and what has yet to be. Now, it's about time I stopped stalling and confronted the problem at hand.

Well, since Quartz, Alex, and Hazel are all out at the moment, there's no one who was at Flengriam at the time in question. I suppose I'll fill the gap until at least one of the three gets back—Quartz will likely not be able to join us again for a day or so, but I'm sure either Hazel or Alex or maybe even both of them will be back soon enough.

I know, I'll tell you a tale I heard from Jace about three year after we first met; right around when we had decided to become adventurers.