Caracara's Hunt

"Where is my sister? Are there any guards around her?" Val asked, standing by the doorway.

The princess bit her lip and frowned, then shrugged. "There weren"t any during the day," she said before turning away.

When her eyes landed on the two corpses in the adjacent room, her little body shuddered, and she quickly hurried through the place. Feeling strangely guilty, Arawn hurried to her side and thought of how to distract her.

"Your brother, do you know what happened to him?"

"My brother?" the girl asked, looking up at him with her familiar dark green eyes.

They annoyed Arawn to no end, but he kept repeating to himself that she wasn"t that man. It wasn"t her who had sentenced him to rot away in a dungeon since birth.

"I was in the castle for a time, till around the time you were born, and I"ve met the prince then. He soon disappeared though and I never heard of him again," he explained while walking forward with his eyes straight ahead.

In his peripheral vision, he caught sight of a strange expression on the girl"s face. She seemed to be hard at work puzzling something out, but none of the answers she came up with seemed to satisfy her.

In the end, she turned away from him. "He was sent away to train. I"ve only seen him a couple times."

They advanced in silence after that, with Betty carrying the candle to light their way. It wasn"t the most inconspicuous way to travel, but the princess couldn"t see in the dark. She needed some light to navigate the large mansion.

After a few tries at doors that led to empty rooms, she huffed and hugged tighter her plush toy with a dagger for an arm. "They kept on moving her all the time. I didn"t know why until now."

Her voice was full of frustration, and she glared at the hallway like it had personally insulted her. She even tapped with her foot unconsciously while thinking something.

"You"ve got any other places to try?" Rain asked in a tight voice.

The princess nodded with her brow furrowed. "Yes, but they"re downstairs. There might be more guards there."

"Would they attack you?"

"What?" The princess looked at Rain like she had heard something ludicrous. "I"m Princess Kyla! Of course they wouldn"t dare touch a hair on my head! Are you crazy?"

"Then let"s go," Val said, motioning for Betty to go first since she had the candle. "We can defend ourselves."

They skipped past the servant stairs which were too narrow and might trap them and found wider ones used by the n.o.bility that had once lived in the mansion. It was a little dangerous to walk in open s.p.a.ces, but the mercenaries seemed to not venture onto the higher floors. Whatever was the reason for that, it served their group well.

They quickly went down the wide staircase while keeping the princess in the middle of them. If anyone tried to attack, they would be blasted away with more ether than they could fathom.

After another step down, Arawn paused. He tilted his head, listening. Had he imagined it, or had there been a noise up ahead of them? It was really soft, but he thought he had heard an extra footstep.

"There! Another one!"

"Stop! Ambush!" he shouted out and dashed forward.

It was only a few steps, but the moment Betty turned her head around to look at Arawn, a blade struck her chest. She gasped for air and looked down, seeing a wooden handle sticking out from between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Her hand shook, and the candle dropped from her hand. It hit the ground in a dozen pieces and plunged them in total darkness.

"What"s happening?" Val shouted, turning left and right in confusion.

"Betty! Betty!" Rain screamed.

The injured woman stood for another moment, then fell on her knees and gasped. The breath came in a shudder, rattling the long blade in her chest. She grabbed onto its handle, but the moment she touched it, pain laced through her body, and she let go. The moment she pulled out the long knife, she would bleed to death.

"Betty, answer me! Betty!" Rain shouted, dropping by her companion.

Val was looking around blindly, not understanding what had happened while asking for an answer, while the princess was frozen in the middle, standing as still as a statue.

"Shut up! Just shut up!" Arawn screamed and landed before his companions.

His eyes only needed a moment to adjust to the darkness, and he glanced around them, searching for their ambusher. But there was nothing. The long knife seemed to have come out of thin air.

"I— Betty— She"s bleeding!"

"And she"ll be dead if you don"t shut up," Arawn hissed through gritted teeth.

He couldn"t see anyone around them, but before, he had heard something. Their only chance was him hearing the enemy again.

The next moment, he saw movement below. Not even thinking about it, he sent a blade of ether that way with his eyes closed. The bright ether would have blinded him if he looked at it.

There was a loud clang when a knife was cut in half and its pieces clattered to the ground. This time, Arawn was sure that their enemy was invisible. There had been no one in the direction from which the knife had come.

But he didn"t have time to think about how that could be. Collecting an obscene amount of ether in his hands, he sent all of it in the direction of the suspected ambusher. There was no sound of impact, so he called upon more ether and surrounded them in a storm of ether blades.

"To the right!" There was a sound of something on his right!

He sent even more ether in that direction. A loud thump followed his attacks, and he subsided, instead materializing some ether high in the air to light up the staircase for everyone.

His eyes were still adjusting when something cold touched his back. It pierced skin and went through the muscle, slicing it apart. The feeling was a disturbingly familiar one.

"NO!" he screamed, true terror finally overcoming him.

He whirled around like a man possessed and sheathed his hand in materialized ether. There was nothing behind him, but he struck with his glowing hand, stabbing forward with it like it was a dagger.

As expected, it met with resistance. Something blocked his way, but he only pushed harder. Ether was sharper than any blade, and it cut through whatever was in its way.

The invisibility was torn apart, and a man hidden within a cloak was revealed. Arawn met his surprised gaze and smiled ruthlessly. His hand pushed forward even deeper, going through flesh and bone like they were nothing.

The unfamiliar man grabbed Arawn by the hand, trying to stop him, but he only got his hands cut up for his trouble. Arawn"s whole arm was sheathed in ether in the shape of a blade. Its edge could cut steel, so what was skin and muscle before it?

"You… You…" the man choked out and fell to the ground. He couldn"t even voice his anger before his life drained away from his body.

Arawn followed him to the ground. He could feel the madness of upcoming death looming at the edges of his consciousness, about to push him out. There was nothing he could do about it but pray that he wouldn"t go maniacal when there was no threat around him.

"I killed him, I killed the threat," he whispered to the monster in him. "Please, let them live."

As his eyes closed, he heard someone drop on their knees next to him. That felt important somehow, and he forced himself to open his eyes.

The princess knelt by his side, but she wasn"t looking at him. Weeping, she took hold of the unfamiliar man"s hand and held onto it. "Brother," she whispered. "Brother…"

Her words jolted Arawn, bringing his fading consciousness away from the brink of darkness. "He-he"s your… brother?" he asked through pain and sudden unfamiliarity with his own body. It felt like it was his, but at the same time, that it was somehow alien.

The girl glared at him and pulled out the dagger from her plush toy"s leg. She raised it over her head, ready to strike him, but a large hand grabbed hold of her thin arm.

"You don"t want to do that," a male voice said while extracting the weapon from her hand.

Instead of struggling, the princess let the man take her dagger. A smile blossomed on her face, and she threw herself at the newcomer. "Big brother, you"re also here!"

Arawn was lying on his stomach, and it was too hard to move, like there was some kind of barrier between him and his body. He couldn"t raise his head enough to look at the stranger"s face.

When the princess saw him struggling against himself, she grinned at him viciously. "This is my eldest brother!"

"Welcome back to the capital, demon kid," Corwal said, his familiar voice striking at a wound that had yet to fully heal.

And now, it would never do. That childish name-calling was a sign, a warning; Corwal knew everything. Arawn stared beyond the princess, not seeing anything, then let go of himself. He didn"t know where he went when the monster took over, but it was away, and at that moment, that was exactly where he wanted to be.

Blinding light surrounded his body. It was so bright Rain had to close her eyes. She crouched by Betty, feeling as powerless as when she had just started her training. What was the point of all her skills if she couldn"t do anything when it mattered?

If she had went to become a doctor, she could at least have been able to heal Betty. It would mean she could do at least something.

Yet it wasn"t what she had chosen, and she had to deal with it. Pulling out her knives, she prepared for a battle to the death. It was unlikely that she could defeat Corwal without her earth magic to rely on, but she would go out with a fight.

With Val and her combining their strengths, maybe, just maybe, they could even make him retreat. If no support came, of course. That was unlikely though. With the light show Arawn had put up, everyone in the street should have seen it, let alone the mercenaries sleeping downstairs.

Once the ether faded away, Rain looked up, ready to block an upcoming attack, but there was nothing. Corwal stood with the young princess wrapped around his waist, holding onto him like he was the only thing keeping her standing. Tear stains still marred her cheeks, but there was utter shock in her eyes.

Rain followed her gaze and understood why she could still see. Arawn"s body was glowing with a faint ether light. Slowly, the knife in his back was being pushed out as the wound repaired itself. In a minute or so, the strike to the heart which should have killed him instantly was gone. The skin that could be seen through the hole in his shirt was pale white as the rest of him and without a single blemish.

The ether around him grew stronger, and he pushed himself to a sitting position.

Filled with joy, Rain stood up and took a step closer to him, but her legs froze once he turned his face toward her. His eyes were two blazing suns, and there was no emotion on his face. He sat like a sculpture filled with ether. There was nothing about him to signal that he was human.

"What… Arawn?" she called out, not daring to take another step closer.

There was something disturbing about his bright yellow eyes that had no pupils. She couldn"t even tell if he was looking at her or not.

Instead of answering, the glowing youth growled at her. It wasn"t threatening, but it wasn"t friendly either. He sounded like an ancient monster woken up from its slumber and being grumpy about it.

"Don"t do anything to anger it or we"ll all die," Corwal said. He unwrapped the princess from his body and left her stand alone while taking a few steps closer to them. "Arawn? Can you change back?"

A glowing hand slashed through the air, and an ether blade cut the ground a finger away from Corwal"s feet. He looked at it and swallowed. "I guess you do have memories of your other self."

Val came back to his senses at that moment and took a couple steps back. "What is that?" he demanded in a harsh voice, but the way his body shook revealed his true emotions.

"His other form. This is why he"s been locked up for so long," Corwal said with a wry smile. "If I had known who he was, I would have never let him out."

"Say it," Rain said with her fingers clenched around the handles of her knives. "Who is he?"

"If you really wanna know. Have you heard about the ma.s.sacre on Summer Solstice some twenty years ago?"

Rain nodded. It was an event that had happened in Ayersbert, but had shaken the whole continent. On the day of Summer Solstice, a dark mage had went mad. He used a whole village for a blood sacrifice, not leaving even the children alive. Then, when the king sent an army to apprehend him, he used the bodies of the dead villagers to fight them off.

Tens of thousands of people had died, both mages and soldiers. Some people wanted to dismiss it as a horrible exaggeration, but it was a fact that Ayersbert had lost its whole army in the mountains. Even twenty years later, the country hadn"t fully recovered from it.

"What does that have to do with anything? Do you want to say he"s a survivor of that ma.s.sacre somehow corrupted by the dark arts?"

Corwal laughed and turned to Arawn. "Do you hear that? She thinks you"re the victim in that story."

The glowing youth growled at him, but didn"t attack. His expression remained stone-like.

Corwal turned to Rain. "The story you"ve heard is probably pure nonsense, so just know that the number of casualties was no exaggeration. And all those people were killed by the person before you. He was two years old at that time, and he ma.s.sacred his whole village before deciding to wipe out the army as well." He shook his head. "And he wondered why no one thought he could become a doctor..."