Bab 80: The Archmage's Role
Arawn froze, the words he had been about to speak getting stuck in his throat. Could he sacrifice Rain, Val, and Betty to ensure that he would not be forced into a monstrous form that would massacre hundreds of innocent people?
He had seen the crowds a mere bird show had attracted. If an execution was on display, there would be three times the amount of people. Death was always everyone's favorite attraction.
The numbers were clear, but Arawn knew Rain and Val and Betty personally. He had talked to them, fought with them, and slept in the same camp with them. They were his companions. Even if they hated him after learning what he truly was, they had showed him kindness before. Could he just abandon them for the greater good?
"Could you do it?" he asked, looking up at Corwal.
The man's expression darkened, and he turned his head away. "I've done it before. It's hard the first time, but you get used to it later. You learn to not get attached to people."
"Is that why you could let Val lose his arm? It didn't matter to you what happened to him?'
"I healed him, didn't I?" Corwal asked with a glare his way. "How was I to know he'd be stupid enough to lose an arm? He should have just taken a hit to the heart and bled to death. There would have been no problems then."
Understanding struck Arawn. Corwal hadn't been as cruel as he had thought. It didn't change anything, but he finally understood what was the original plan. If anyone had been simply injured mortally, Corwal could have saved them and finished his lesson with that. However, he hadn't taken into consideration that someone might lose a limb, which the talisman could not heal.
Not that it excused his actions. Risking people's lives was not acceptable. He had no right to put people through such suffering for the sake of making a point.
"Why did you do it though?" Arawn asked in a quiet voice. He took a step back to the bars and looked at his friend.
"Doesn't matter. You were still stupid enough to come here."
There was no emotion in Corwal's voice. He just sounded tired, like an old man who woke up from a sweet dream to realise he had no home, no family, and no place to put his head down. In the whole world, there was nothing left for him.
Such uncharacteristic defeatism stole the anger from Arawn. He wanted to shout out his frustration at what had happened, but he felt like he would only be beating a dead horse. It was not a human, but a shadow of one sitting before him.
"What do you suggest I do then? Is there a way I can avoid what they set up for me?"
"No, accept it and die inside like the rest of us have done. Your whole life has been lived in preparation for this moment. There's no avoiding it."
That couldn't be true. There had to be a way around it. Arawn refused to accept that he had lived only to become a greater monster. The massacre from his childhood had never left him. It was a constant reminder of what happened when he lost control.
He couldn't let it happen again. He had sworn it to himself and the archmage. It was why he had never tried to escape. When in a dungeon, even if he killed, it would only be criminals that suffered his wrath. It wasn't right to take any life that didn't forfeit it by trying to take someone else's chance at living, but at least those people weren't the true innocents. They were bad enough to deserve being separated from the society.
Yet the archmage would go back on every lesson he had taught Arawn for the sake of starting a war? How did that make any sense?
"The archmage would never agree to this," Arawn said with conviction. "He's a good person."
Corwal laughed quietly to himself. "You do know he's been serving as royal advisor since before our king ascended the throne? Do you really think someone in his position could remain pure and good despite the scheming happening all around him? Don't kid yourself. He's just as bad as the king."
"No!" Arawn refuted, shaking his head with vigor. "He told me what I did and helped me look for ways to prevent a repetition! He doesn't want me to turn into a monster!"
"And he watched the instructors in the Kennel remove my nails, cut off my fingers, and break my arm to be thorough without saying a word. He then healed me so they could repeat the process a couple more times so I really got the lesson," Corwal said.
Unable to remain still, he stood up and came to stand right before Arawn. Deep-seated hatred shone in his eyes, and his voice was a low hiss. "He watched them torture me like you would watch fish playing in the water. There was not the slightest hint of pity or regret in his eyes. No, he stood too high above trash like me. The mere act of having to heal me seemed to disgust him."
He grabbed an onyx bar and pulled on it with enough force to leave faint finger marks. "So if you want your delusionals, keep them, but don't you dare voice them in front of me. He's a fuckin' vermin that lives off the blood of those weaker than him. Quartering would be too kind of a death for him."
Still not having vented his fury, Corwal punched the onyx bars and turned away. His fist was bleeding, but he didn't seem to mind. Without another word, he turned around and jogged up the stairs. The door was locked, preventing him from leaving, but once he settled on the top step, neither of them could see each other anymore.
Only when he disappeared did Arawn react. He watched the place where Corwal had stood, trying to make sense of his words. They made sense individually, but once put together, they lost all sense of reality.
How could the archmage be such a person? Arawn could well recall the old man that didn't look his age. There was never a smile on his wrinkle-free face, but he radiated a sense of calm that could not be faked. Even if the world crumbled around him, he would remain unperturbed and would finish what he was doing.
For Arawn, it was exactly what he needed. When the king and his other mages denounced him, the archmage just watched it happen and did not change his actions. He brought food for Arawn and sat by his side while he ate, telling him about his work.
It was too complicated for the then toddler Arawn to understand what he said, but he remembered the calming effect those words had on him. It was the only half an hour in his day that he wasn't alone. Unlike everyone else, the archmage didn't fear him and came to talk to him.
During check ups, he presented him in the best light. Although he mentioned his failures, he never let them outshadow the times he avoided losing control and remained himself. His praise was constructed so well, even the king would be impressed sometimes.
When the time came for Arawn to be sent out of the castle and into the first dungeon, the archmage had come to him ahead of schedule and warned him about what was going to happen. He told him how it would be dangerous among the criminals, but that he could still remain himself. If he worked hard enough, he could learn to not lose control at any provocation.
No matter how Arawn tried to match this image of the archmage with the one described by Corwal, he couldn't do it. The two had nothing in common.
And yet… and yet… he couldn't deny the accusation that the archmage was the royal advisor to a cruel and monstrous king. Arawn had seen the way the king looked at him. There was no compassion in those dark green eyes.
Whenever the king came for an update, he would question about Arawn's progress with great interest. It had terrified the child him. He could sense malice aimed at him even if no words were directly aimed at him.
"That cannot be true… Not the archmage…"
Although Arawn had been angry at the archmage for not introducing him to the profession of a doctor, it was not to the point of hating the man. How could he do that? The archmage's calm and thoughtful words had helped him make sense of the world and not fall into the abyss of self-loathing.
Despite all his faults, the old man had helped him become the person he was. It was because of him that Arawn saw killing as wrong and helping people as good. And what about speech? About basic human behavior?
He would have been no better than a wild animal without the archmage's steady presence in his life. There had never been anyone else who had bothered to pay any attention to him. In the cage, there had only been him, the noise from all over the castle, and the all too short moments each day when the archmage came to visit him.
Arawn had never thought of the man as his father, but he had once been an important person in his life. They hadn't seen each other for close to a decade, however, and back then, he had only been a child. His memories of those days were few and possibly colored by his loneliness and overreliance.
He didn't want to accept it, however. It just couldn't be right. Was there really not a single person he could believe in and trust? Not even his mentor and caretaker?
'I seem to have terrible luck with teachers.'
With that thought, he pushed away from the onyx bars and retreated into the cell. Sitting down in a corner, he tried to remember all the times he had spoken with the archmage and what had been the man's replies and reactions. He then sifted through them with all the new knowledge he had gained in the outside world.
Hadiah
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