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Realization wasn\'t a process too daunting for everybody in the room to overcome. There wasn\'t a single soul within these white walls that didn\'t come to a speedy conclusion of their own.

I did.

Irene did.

And Ash most definitely did. It was probably her out of the rest of us that should be the most affected by the words shared in this brief moment we had together... and she most definitely was.

"It was you?" Her voice was breathless, the strength from before all but usurped. "You summoned me... here?"

Jay met the disbelief in her emerald eyes, speaking out in a way that left no opportunity to misconstrue. "If only I\'ve done it right. You wouldn\'t even have to ask me that question the way you did."

So many questions but not enough mouths to speak them out. My head was a flood of question marks yearning to break loose. This situation we found ourselves in was certainly, vastly more than we\'ve bargained for.

It\'s like every mystery, every elusive enigma, all fell onto the shoulders of this one single individual. Whether this was just a simple case of against-all-odds coincidence or just the puppet strings of fate at play again... either way, for some reason I had this strange feeling that we would have ended up crossing our paths. If not sooner, than later.

Didn\'t matter what it was... if it was for Ash, for the Blight, or any other mystical happenings that\'d surely end up arising, the path taken would have been one and the same.

All roads lead to Jay. And here stopped we... staring straight ahead at our final destination.

I spoke first. "What mistake did you make?

"Inexperience," Jay said, not even bothering a glance towards me. "I hate magic. I was never good at magic. Never bothering learning any till only recently."

"How recent\'s recent?"

"Give or take sixty years." He squinted his eyes. "Like I said, I suck at magic... and I wasn\'t exactly your brightest and best, you could see how it might have taken decades to get a grasp on things."

Sixty years and yet he doesn\'t look a day over twenty-four... I\'m telling you, these Kronocians age like fine wine.

"You don\'t look your age."

Jay snorted, smiling faintly. "Trust me, man... none of us do. Probably necessary for the magically illiterate. If I didn\'t have such a long lifespan, don\'t think I\'d be able to do it."

It was Irene\'s turn now to speak, swiping and seizing the metaphorical microphone from my hands. "But you\'re a Magus. It\'s kind of hard to imagine one that finds casting spells a headache."

"Well, I guess I\'m not your typical Magus," He said flatly. "In fact, I wouldn\'t even call myself that. Didn\'t enroll in any academy, no sorcerer ever took me under their wing, hell, I didn\'t even get any official inauguration. How could I have? There weren\'t any kingdoms left to swore me in on account of the fact that the entire world was reduced into nothingness."

Jay sounded bitter, spiteful... there was that look again, unbridled resentment afresh in the sharp glint of his eyes.

"I left Kronocia a simple historian\'s son. I still remember that day like it was just yesterday. Terestra decided why not end the world and that was that. Friends, family... don\'t really know how I got spared, luck maybe... anyway, before my father bit the dust, he told me about a great breach that happened a few years back. A succubus managed to beguiled one of the Ancient Magi into tearing a hole in the realm for her, he was promptly sent to be executed shortly after… I\'m guessing that was you?"

His stare had me staring too… Irene didn\'t return my glances, instead opting to remain stone-faced leaving nothing besides a cold glare forward. I was familiar with that tale but not in that way. She had just simply told me she departed her world quick and clean - no mention of any deception, no mention of any lives being lost in the process.

Different succubus, perhaps? It\'s a huge expansive world out there brimming with people of all shapes and sizes… what are the chances that it really was her that his dad\'s story referred to.

Well, judging by that continued silence… a hundred percent sounds about right on the money.

"Not judging by the way," Jay continued. "Did what you have to do. In fact, you probably had more foresight than any of us. No wonder you\'ve got the badge. You knew Kronocia\'s fate was sealed a long time ago, so you jumped ship. It\'s fine. I did the same, after all. I\'m no charmer, but I did know my way around a blade."

Irene finally spoke out again. "A Magus worth their salt wouldn\'t even bat an eye at a sword."

"Normally the case, but doomsday had disrupted the balance of magic in the realm. One moment you have magic… the next you don\'t, and the Magi aren\'t really renowned for their prowess in hand-to-hand. Got her in a position where she pretty much had no choice but to do what I say. Dangling her little book against a sword pretty much did the trick."

There was a click of the tongue. Ash\'s brow grew more furrowed. "You\'re foul."

"Hey, that\'s double standards talking," Jay rebutted. "I survived. Just like your friend here did. I didn\'t even have to get her killed to get what I wanted. Though, I suppose she would have died all the same anyway."

So they both hitched a ride from a forced tear in reality. Makes me wonder… "If the Magi could make portals to this reality… why hasn\'t anybody else just done what you guys did?"

Irene kept it short and simple. "Sacrilegious."

Jay, acting to the contrary, elaborated. "Absconding to another world is an affront to the Divines. You abandoned the world, you oppose the Divines will. You\'ll live a life scorned in the eyes of those that have given you life. It is heresy of the highest order. Nobody dared abandon the Divines. Though if you ask me… they\'re the ones who abandoned us first."

"Oh woe is me," Irene rolled her eyes. "You\'ve lost people. So have I. If anything, I\'m surprised even after everything you\'ve been through, you still did what you did. Blightfall is nothing to scoff at."

He shook his head. "You got it backward, detective. It\'s because of what I went through that I did what I did. I had all my life in this strange new world to think about everything that happened, everything I lost. It took years to finally come to my own conclusion on the whole fiasco."

"And that conclusion is…?"

There it was again, more prominent than it\'s ever been - bitterness, spitefulness… and just plain old anger burrowing through the narrow fissures of his cracked lenses.

"That it wasn\'t fair," He said, hissing more than he was speaking. "Why? Why did it have to be Kronocia? Why did that bitch Terestra had to choose my world to destroy? Why couldn\'t it have been this world instead, huh? I\'ve seen their history - this world is already rather eager to go about destroying itself anyway, why couldn\'t she had just done the job here for them? If anything, it was our world that didn\'t deserve what had happened to it. It wasn\'t… it just isn\'t fair, man."

Jay was beginning to become undone. Slowly but surely, spite was replacing smiles, humor devolved to anger. I started to stop seeing the intern, stopped associating his expression of one with smiles… It wasn\'t possible anymore, not with the flicker in his brows, the quivering of his lips. The Magus flared his nostrils, and with that, gone was all sense of amiability.

"It sucks to suck and I wasn\'t having it. I wanted to do something, I had to do something. So I did. Sixty long FUCKING years of nothing but Focus, Deliberation, and Intent. Over and over again. A guy could go mad, you know? Had no teacher, who was I gonna learn from? No… did it all by myself, mummy."

He sprung his fingers, brandishing them out like claws, and instantly from his fingertips flared little bright orbs of diffrent shades of color. He beamed, his teeth baring wide open, stretching both arms out towards us.

"Look at this! Magic like no one\'s business! I had to teach myself this, you know? A Magus\' life isn\'t an easy one."

Alarm bells were blared incessantly in my head, ringing to the tune of stranger fucking danger. It seems Irene and Ash were tuned to the same frequency as I as they both got into the same cautionary stance, subtly inching their way towards me.

As for me, I had nowhere to turn to, so I stood still, stood staring… watching the madness slowly start to unravel before me.

And to be honest, I was starting to get pretty riled up myself. Not gonna lie.

"You became a Magus just for that?" I said, narrowing my eyes. "Life\'s not fair, so you have to go ruin it for everyone else? An eye for an eye, is that really was going on here?" Your world is gone! It sucks… but how is destroying another world ever going to make up for the one you lost?"

I knew he was going to respond, his widened lips made for a very loose tongue but I wasn\'t expecting the sudden burst of laughter that would precede it first, I especially didn\'t expect to hear such derangement, such lunacy to be so deeply intermixed with his voice.

He laughed like I just told the funniest joke of the millennium, gasped for air like I nearly choked him to death with my words alone, and smiled at me… as if I was the biggest idiot on the planet.

"Who the hell said anything about destroying the world?"