Caracara's Hunt

But his mind pushed through the haze of drowsiness and woke up. Right away, memories of what happened before he retreated into himself a.s.saulted him, and he pulled in his limbs to form a ball. The outside world was cold, but the temperature of his heart was no better.

Why did Corwal have to find out? Why couldn"t it remain a secret buried forever?

"Because you"re a monster and an abomination. People need to know what you"re capable of."

That reminded Arawn that he knew nothing about what had happened after he let go like a coward that he was. Were the others still alive? Or had he slaughtered the people he had promised to protect?

His hands balled into fists. He could just imagine their bodies splattered all over the staircase as they looked at him with disbelief and betrayal in their eyes. They had done nothing but been kind to him while he acted like a snake, biting the hand that freed it.

Was it that surprising though? Wasn"t it how he always acted?

Even his oldest memory was of such an event. The rest of it had faded away with time, but his brother"s eyes stayed with him to haunt his dreams.

"You"re finally awake?" a voice asked from nearby, and Arawn shivered.

He didn"t want to open his eyes for it would make everything real. If he just never woke up, he would not have to face the consequences of who he was.

"Come on, stop acting. I"ve seen you move."

The speaker didn"t sound too interested and spoke in a low, harsh voice, so Arawn hadn"t recognised it at first, but wasn"t it Corwal? His eyes flew open, and he jumped to his feet.

Balance was a bit of a challenge, but he hobbled to the front of his cell and grabbed onto the onyx bars with surprising speed. "What happened? How are you alive? Did the others survive too?"

His barrage of questions was answered by a dark laugh, and he realised that something wasn"t right. He blinked a few times to get rid of the remnants of sleep and looked around.

As expected, he was in some kind of dungeon. Quickly though, he realized that it wasn"t just any dungeon—it was where the archmage had brought him as a child, when still trying to figure him out.

It was right under the archmage"s private chambers, and the whole place was built like the Gutter—purely from onyx. The only difference was that the archmage"s dungeon was a lot smaller and only had enough room for one prisoner.

This made Corwal"s presence a rather strange event. What was he doing just waiting for him to wake up in the semi-darkness of the freezing dungeon? The only torch over the man"s head did little to illuminate the absolute darkness in the cell.

Corwal himself didn"t look okay either. Back when he had shown up out of nowhere in the mansion, Arawn hadn"t paid too much attention to it, but the man had seemed better. The shadows under his eyes had disappeared, and his skin had become healthy once more.

But now… he looked twice as bad. In the time Arawn had been asleep, the whole world seemed to have crashed onto Corwal"s shoulders, and he had caved under the pressure. There was little of the old him left in the person before Arawn.

What sat on the dirty floor below the torch was more a strange humanoid creature than a human. Corwal"s hair was uncut and lay in greasy clumps around his gaunt face. It wasn"t due to starvation or anything, but there was just something haunted in his gla.s.sy eyes that made him feel like a ghost.

The vibrant life he was so full of before was gone without a trace. Even his obviously well-made clothes were dirty and stained.

"What happened to you?" Arawn asked in a soft voice.

The change unnerved him. He was angry at Corwal for what he had done, but… this was too much. He would have never wished such a thing upon his friend.

"What do you care? You"re at fault for it."

"I am?"

"Yes, you are! Why the h.e.l.l do you think I"d be here otherwise? For sightseeing? G.o.d you"re stupid." He shook his head, but didn"t stand up. "At least we"re all gonna die soon."

Arawn blinked a few times, trying to follow the conversation that went at the speed of the galloping horse, and failing. He had no idea how he had p.i.s.sed Corwal off so much or what was even happening. Hadn"t he just woken up a few minutes ago?

As he stared stupidly before himself, Corwal glanced at him and spit to the side. "You didn"t wake up, so they locked me up here in hopes to bring you back. They needed their monster human, you see."

"Locked you up?" Arawn asked in disbelief.

This just didn"t sound logical. Even if someone was locked up with his monster form, what did it matter? How would it help him return?

But more importantly, why Corwal? Wasn"t he a hound and one of the strongest one of them? Why would anyone waste his time by putting him in a dungeon because of a faint hope that it would help Arawn wake up?

Corwal glanced at the stairs a few meters away from him. "They"ll come at some point to check on my progress. Guess I"ll finally be able to leave now that you bothered to show up."

"How long have you been here?"

"Two days? Maybe three. It"s hard to count time without the sun, and the guard often forgets to bring my meal at all." Corwal leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.

There was such exhaustion on his face, Arawn didn"t know if he should bother the man. Yet he couldn"t hold in the thought that was eating at him from the inside. Had he done it or not?

"Did I kill Rain and the others?" he whispered, still holding onto the onyx bars between him and Corwal.

His friend didn"t even open his eyes. "Do you think I"d be here if you had went crazy? But don"t worry, you"ll get the chance to repair that mistake in a day or two."

That thought didn"t help Arawn. The relief that should have come was drowned in a new wave of worry. "What do you mean?"

"Why do you think the king needs you?" Corwal asked with obvious mockery in his words. "He"ll have you turn into the beast in the execution grounds and allow you to kill everyone there."

Before Arawn could say anything though, a vicious smile stretched across Corwal"s face, and his eyes lit up with fox fires. "But he doesn"t know you. He thinks he"ll be able to subdue you when the time comes just because he was able to do it when you were a child. Fool. He"s a fool. In a few days, you"ll ma.s.sacre your way out of the capital without leaving a single survivor."

"What are you talking about!"

Horror washed over Arawn like a tidal wave, and he barely remained standing. This was impossible. He would never let that happen. He would…

"You"ve grown, and so has your power," Corwal murmured with a smirk. "Once you finally change into a beast, no one will be able to stop you."

"I won"t turn into a beast! I"m not one!" Arawn refused, pulling away from the onyx bars and wrapping his hands around himself.

He was a monster, but not that kind. Beasts were the opposite of ether—they were its nemesis. How could someone like him, who had too much access to the ether, be one of them? No beast had ever been known to use ether! Their very own skin repelled it!

"Don"t you know what you did when you killed your family? It wasn"t because of your ether that you were confined and researched like an lab animal."

Unwanted, memories of the past flashed through Arawn"s eyes. He was too young to really remember anything, but a few moments were frozen in time for him to review at his leisure. There was some kind of celebration, and his brother had received a gift while he didn"t.

They argued over it, and Arawn had snapped. He called upon something that he had never noticed before. It came to him with eagerness and then sprung from his arms straight at his brother.

He would never forget the shock and betrayal in his brother"s eyes as his small body was cut into pieces. Confusion had filled Arawn since he did not understand what had happened; death was not a concept he was familiar with at that time. Yet he knew that something was wrong, very very wrong.

So when his parents rushed in after hearing a scream, he panicked and grabbed onto the thing from before. All he wanted was for his parents to not see what he had done. Somehow, the power he had touched interpreted that as lashing out with more ether blades. Or maybe it was just him being the monster that he was.

The fragment of his memory ended at that, but he had been told a thousand times what had happened after that. Once other people came, he was in too much of a frenzy to stop. He ma.s.sacred all the villagers, and when the army came, he drowned it in the ether as well. Once his mind went numb from the killing, the monster awoke and finished the job.

The only reason he stopped killing was because there was no one else left to kill. A few scavengers had ventured over some time later and found his starved little body. They sold him to the archmage who then put him into an onyx cage to ensure that he didn"t change into the ether monster again. Sometimes it worked, while at other times… it was less useful.

"They actually never told you?" Corwal asked with surprise, his voice returning to its natural timbre for the first time. "You weren"t just pretending you don"t know about the beasts?"

Arawn shook his head, feeling sick. Was he also a detestable beast that killed people indiscriminately? An involuntary laugh bubbled up his throat. How different was it from his ether madness? Since when had he cared about those he killed?

"The reason you"re so special is because you"re the only beast that has ever returned to human form. Many of the corpses around your village were burned with ether, but many more had been slaughtered by a beast. At first, the archmage thought that you were insignificant and a random beast had slaughtered everyone, but then, he noticed something.

"The beast seemed to be a child. Its hair found on the battlefield were immune to ether, and its claws had went through steel as per usual, but their size was wrong. All beasts were uniform, reaching around a meter in height while on all fours, but this one seemed to be no larger than a hunting dog. It puzzled the archmage until he found you."

"But I"ve never changed into a beast…" Arawn whispered.

He would have known if he had. Although he didn"t have clear memories of the times when the monster took over, he had a sense of it. He knew it was an ether creature and not a beast.

Corwal sighed and looked down at his hands. "It seems you stopped changing when you reached four years old or such. But before that, whenever the king or archmage thought of killing you, you would change and destroy everything around you, making the feat impossible."

Arawn waited for something more, but nothing came, and he was forced to think about what he had heard. The beast business was something he refused to accept, so he latched onto the last sentence. It didn"t make him feel any better though.

"So the only reason I"m still alive is just because they couldn"t kill me?"

He had been told it before, but somewhere deep within, he had hoped that there was a better reason than that. After all, the archmage himself had been his caretaker! If he was just a random monster, why would such an important person bother with him? The world outside seemed to be filled with people even worse than him, if with less power.

"Oh no, if they had really wanted it, they could have found a way. You"re just human, after all," Corwal said with a laugh. "You need to eat and drink, and company to not go crazy."

"Why then? Why did they keep me alive?"

"Because of what will happen at the execution. You"re the key to Ayersbert waging war on Mairya. The king saw this potential in you when you were just a toddler, and so he kept you alive. Now, it"s time for you to return the favor and do his bidding."

Corwal"s amus.e.m.e.nt chilled Arawn. He didn"t find anything funny in the situation. "I"m not going to do it," he swore. "I won"t let him wound me so I lose it!"

"Do you really think you"ll be given the choice?" Corwal asked with bitterness in his voice. "If you try to escape now, Rain and the others will be killed before you can get to them. And if you stay? I"ll get to see your beast form. Do you think it"s fully grown up yet?"