"Pick up the pace," Jason grumbled, several steps ahead of his charge. "At this rate the dragon will be dust by the time we get there."

He knew he was being harsh; he just didn't care. After being admonished by the Bat-Prince for being "too violent," he'd been saddled with a mission to take down a giant fire-breathing lizard. Except his job wasn't to hunt the beast. No, he was just a glorified babysitter for a mage too annoying, too frail and too slow for his liking.

Granted, slaying a dragon was probably too tall of an order for Jason alone. Not that he would admit that. That would require things like self-awareness, and tact, and vulnerability, all of which Jason was very, very sorely lacking. What he had in spades was arrogance, spite, misplaced confidence, and choice words for his traveling companion.

"What are you, a snail? Come on," he groused. "The dragon can swoop down and bite off our heads in half the time it takes you to take a single damn step."

Look, he got it, okay? Yeah, magic users had been treated like garbage in El. Now that magic was no longer outlawed, all the mages that had been imprisoned had been set free. And their imprisonment hadn't been without consequence. A lot of them were malnourished, weak, and many had remained frail even after all this time. But then why in blazes send a weak mage to kill a godsdamned dragon? Couldn't they have sent a mage with, you know, better stamina than that?