"You're not going to do anything to them, are you?" Arawn asked in a low voice.
By then, he no longer had any idea what Corwal could or couldn't do. There was something vicious hidden in his words, and it was strong enough for even Arawn to take note of it. He wasn't worried for himself, but anyone else that got in the man's way.
"Get out," Corwal ordered the mother with her children.
The kids began to wail. Their mother hugged them close to her chest while watching Corwal like a threatened rabbit. It wanted to dart away for its life, but its children were right there, too young to get away by themselves.
Without another word, Corwal went to check the other wagons. He found four more survivors who had hidden deep enough that Arawn hadn't taken notice of them in his crazed state. All of them were white from fright and kept looking around like some monster would jump at them at any moment.
One woman screamed upon seeing the dismembered bodies. Once she brought everyone's attention to it, the other three went even paler. A young man fainted on the spot while two others turned around to puke.
The disgusting sound of them emptying their guts was somehow fitting for the scene of carnage. The two went well together.
Arawn had thought he'd break down the next time he lost control, but there was nothing within him. A void swirled where his heart had once been. Neither the blood nor the broken limbs meant anything to him. The emptiness within him was too vast for anything to affect him.
Once upon a time, he had cried and shouted and screamed and howled and hit himself, but all of that seemed like a dream right now. Had it even been him? He was so far from that person that he couldn't even imagine acting like that.
"Once you fall into the abyss as far as I have, there's no climbing back up," he murmured to himself.
How many times had his power run rampant? Slipped from his control and ravaged the land? Too many to count. He wanted to be scared and terrified, angry at himself and the world, but there was just nothing in him. Numbness drowned out any flicker of emotion.
Even the worry that Corwal would hate him died down as soon as it came. It was just something that always happened.
He was tired, so very tired.
Why was he shackled with so much power? If he'd done something in his past life, one would think that he would be the one to get cursed and not everyone around him.
'You're an abomination, a mistake. Someone like you should have never existed.'
The archmage had been more right than he knew. Arawn looked at the ether particles that rested in all things alive and inanimate like they had done nothing. They were white in color and would turn into light upon materialization, but did that make them innocent?
Or was he blaming the sword for the misdeeds of its wielder? One could save and kill with it, so why should it be blamed for the evil that was done with it. The problem lay not with the sword, but the hand that swung it.
"Enough daydreaming. We're leaving."
Arawn looked up to see that Corwal was standing by his side with two pouches in his hands. He was counting the money in them with a frown.
"Are we just abandoning those—" Arawn stopped when he noticed that no one was around them anymore. "Where did they go?"
"I sent them to meet with the group that had went to get water. They'll be here before long, so we need to leave." He poured all the shiny coins into one pouch and attached it to his belt. "Hurry, stand up."
"Are you certain you want to continue traveling with me? I'm—"
Corwal looked at him with a wry smile. "You're what? A monster? If so, every mage should be called that. The reason we train is only to get better at killing."
They left with two travel bags Corwal had prepared out of what he could scavenge from the broken wagons on a short notice. It wasn't much, but they had some dried rations, water, and blankets. Arawn had also changed his bloody clothes into a clean set.
The road was nearby, and they took it as if that was what they had done from the very start. There was nothing to do, so Arawn lost himself in his thoughts once more. He couldn't help mocking his previous self who had held some hope that he might leave the cursed circle of death.
Whatever he did, it was always the same. No matter if he sat in the Gutter where ether should have been suppressed or was outside and in a good mood, he would lose control sooner or later. Once everyone was killed, he'd meet new people, get to know them, and kill them the next time his power broke free.
'Control. Ha, what stupid control. None of it matters at all.'
His joy at learning to hold the ether was a good joke. The moment he felt like he took a step forward, reality slammed him back down with a vicious kick. It wasn't even funny anymore. How much did his effort to change even matter if the end result remained the same?
A patrol stopped them. There were twenty people on horses, and their leader questioned them about what had happened. Corwal explained that they had seen the light pillar, but were too afraid to get close and ran away. The patrol thanked him for the specific directions to the pillar's location, then left.
Once they were alone again, Corwal turned to Arawn with an unreadable expression. "What do you think is the worst part about being a king's dog?"
"You have to follow his orders?" Arawn suggested. It was the first thing that came to his mind. "Or that you can't leave his employment?"
"You think so? I'm part of his most secret organization and know all of its ways. If I wanted, I could disappear right now and never be found. Ayersbert isn't large enough to hide, but in any other country, it would be a child's play.
"As to his orders, did you see me receiving any? We only get them when we're not doing our job."
Arawn looked at him. "What then?"
"It's that we can't change this messed up country. Like ghosts, we travel through every city under a different alias, and we see the same horrors everywhere. If we had any official power, we could fight to improve the situation, make it somehow more palatable, but we're just ghosts. Our task is to haunt and kill anyone we think might threaten the stability of the country. In other words, anyone who would want to change it."
Corwal laughed at that, but it was a broken sound, one full of mockery and self-disgust. "The system pushes people to crime, and then I come to exact judgment upon them. In reality, I should have killed you back there. Any untrained mage who lashes out, no matter the reason, is to be executed to ensure they don't do it again."
The man continued walking, but Arawn froze. He didn't take another step, just staring at the person before him. Did he hear correctly? He was supposed to be killed?
A moment later, Corwal noticed that he had stopped and turned around with a raised eyebrow. "Are you suddenly scared? If I was planning to do it, do you really think I'd have given you a warning first?"
Arawn shook his head. "No. I just realized something." He looked up then, watching the man's reaction. "You've done it before. You killed children who lost control. That's why you're so eager to save them now."
"A good guess." Corwal turned around and motioned for him to come. "Let's keep walking. And I was fourteen back then. I had only started training at the Kennel—it's our name for the academy in which we are trained—when I was given the mission. As teenagers, we were too young to deal with criminal mages, so they sent us to take care of small cases, like somebody losing control."
His voice changed then, gaining a strange wistful yet mocking tone. "We were young and naive, believing all that we were told. They said that mages who lose control are a danger to society and should be eliminated. Armed with that knowledge, we scoured the cities, taking lives without care to finish our mission.
"Only later did we find out that those people had as little control of their powers as we when we were sent to join the Kennel. Some of us felt guilty, others didn't care. Our hands were already stained with blood that could never be washed away."
Arawn listened with morbid fascination. The story was horrifying. Teenagers were sent to kill people their own age who were at fault for not learning what the system didn't teach them. And all of that was done with lies and disguises so that the future hounds would be too far down the rabbit hole before they realized they wanted out.
It was a mind game Arawn would have expected in a dungeon, among prisoners, but never in the outside world. The cruelty of it was hard to put into words.
"Why don't you leave then?" he asked. "You said you could do it whenever you felt like it. Why not leave this horrible land that did that to you?"
"Because it's MY horrible land. As long as I stay, I can limit the number of atrocities and help at least a few people. It won't change what I've done, but even a single life saved is a victory in my books."
He looked up at the sky. "We were all born here, and it is our duty to make it better for those who come after us. Even if by the smallest of margins."