63 Meaning of Evil

"I…"

Arawn found his mind empty. There was nothing that he could say to defend himself. It was the truth that he had rushed out without putting too much thought into what may happen to those that followed him. He was invincible, so the idea that others might not be never even crossed his mind.

"What are you doing?" Rain demanded, looking at Arawn with anger. She took a step toward him and pulled him up by a collar. "He's clearly pushing all the blame on you when it's not yours to bear. Can't you see it?"

Their faces were only a finger's length away, and Arawn realized that her eyes were as blue as a cloudless sky on midday. Yet a storm was raging within them at that moment.

"Man up a bit! Don't you see what he's doing?"

When he didn't reply straight away, too distracted by their close proximity, she huffed and turned on Corwal. "And you… You're one bag of shit. It was our own choice to come here, and you're going to push the burden of Val's injury on him? Do you even have any conscience?"

"He could have told you what you were about to face and dissuaded you from that idea," Corwal said in a calm voice. Standing up, he pulled out a handkerchief to clean the blood off his hands.

His calmness infuriated Rain. She chuckled darkly, her expression twisting into one of mockery. "You think I'm blind? Or stupid? Val's injury is your fault and nobody else's."

"I saved—"

"No, you didn't!" Rain screamed, her hands clenching into fists. "You could have come with us, could have fought together, but did you? No, of course not. No one would have been maimed then and your stupid lesson wouldn't have been taught!

"Arawn made a choice for himself for once, and you made sure that it would end up as the wrong one. Don't try to tell me I'm not right. You could have caught up to us even if you had left an hour later, but you didn't. We went at the speed of a crawl while looking for tracks, but somehow, you didn't manage to reach us on time.

"But won't you look at that You showed up just at the right time to act out the hero! That stupid talisman might have been worth a lot, but Val has been crippled! Crippled! You fucking bastard, do you even know what that means? Why don't I cut off your arm too?"

Mutallu took a step forward, appearing before Corwal with a knife drawn. "Try it."

They stood facing each other for a moment, then Rain shook her head and waved it off with her hand. "I can't beat you, but know that all our relations have just ended. I won't work with twisted mongrels like you."

She turned at those words and called for Betty. Together, they pulled Val up. He didn't wake from the jostling, and his expression remained relaxed. It didn't seem like he was in pain in his dreams.

Arawn almost wished to be in his place. If it was all a dream, he could wake up and forget all about it.

He wanted to believe Corwal, to trust him, but a part of him knew that there could be no coming back from this. Rain was right in saying that there was no way for Corwal to be this late unless he wanted to be late. And if he had been present, the fight would have went a lot differently. With him and Mutallu, they would have had two extra pairs of hands to attack the beast.

The four of them had killed it by themselves, so with all six, it would have been much easier. More than likely, no one would have even been seriously injured, or at least no more than Betty and Rain were already.

"Why were you late?" Arawn asked in a soft voice.

"I didn't think you would attack the beast straight away, so I wasn't in a hurry. You should have waited for me."

Corwal's voice was level and his words straight to the point. On the surface, they also made a lot of sense, but once Arawn thought about them, he could only smile ruefully. "It was a lesson, wasn't it?"

"You trust that woman more than me? Just a few words from her and you turn sides?"

With a shake of his head, Arawn turned around. "I told you before, I've been used a thousand times. Everyone covets my power for their own. I didn't believe you were the same, but after today, what else am I supposed to think? You didn't come to help us on purpose, so I would learn not to disagree with your decisions again or some such thing."

A heavy weight landed on Arawn's heart as he spoke. It became hard to breathe, and the corners of his eyes began to itch. Without looking back, he ran after Rain and Betty, away from the person he had trusted the most.

Corwal called out after him, but Arawn didn't turn around. He was afraid that if he stopped, he would listen and believe again. Maybe there really was a good explanation for what Corwal had done, but it could only be made so by some twist of logic, and Arawn didn't want to be a person that would accept that.

The archmage had often talked to him about what would happen if he lost his integrity. Back then, Arawn had sworn he would never do that. As a child, he believed that good and evil were clear cut, and he would only need to avoid the 'bad people'.

But he was no longer so certain about it. Was Corwal evil? He was on the good side, which should have instantly invalidated him from being evil. But if that wasn't enough, he was also the king's trusted servant and saved orphans from starvation whenever he had the chance.

It was not a pretense either. Mutallu seemed to be happy with his new life, and Eliot admired Corwal like no other. The kid had also been left at a good place where he could grow up to be a respectable mage with a social standing.

Yet there was no denying Corwal's cold-bloodedness. When they met Katalan's soldiers, his first reaction had been to fight without even trying to reason it out with them. He should have known that Arawn could free all of them even if they were handcuffed with onyx bracelets.

When Arawn attacked the caravan, they escaped without providing any help to the survivors. Those people had been left in the middle of nowhere with no one to protect them. Later, when Rain fought against Garshta, Corwal didn't care one bit about her survival. His plan from the beginning was to let her die and then challenge the enemy by himself.

Did all of that make him evil? Callous and heartless for sure, but evil?

Arawn didn't know and wasn't certain he wanted to at that moment. He had hoped to learn and become a nobody, escape the constant machinations surrounding him when he had left the Gutter. Yet all of that came crashing down around him as it always did.

Corwal wasn't the pillar of virtue, and his actions reflected that everywhere they went. The man cared only about himself and those close to him while all others could be sacrificed for the simplest of reasons.

"Are you okay?" Rain asked when he burst past them.

There was a clog in Arawn's throat, so he simply nodded before rushing off to his cart. Reaching it first, he spread out the blankets once more to make it more comfortable for Val.

When the two women arrived, he kept his head down and helped them place Val into the cart. The man murmured something under his breath, but didn't wake. Arawn entered the cart after him and sat down with knees drawn close to his chest.

He wanted to forget the knife plunged into his gut, but it wasn't as easy as before. Every time he touched the handle, he only twisted the blade, cutting himself more.

For a moment, he was reminded of the beast with the dagger in its eye. They would make quite a pair, he and it. Both of them were attacked when they least expected it.

Arawn despised what Corwal had done. It was unforgivable. Val's whole life was ruined by his actions.

And yet he could not hate him. Memories of the countless hours Corwal had spent teaching him went before his eyes on repeat. How much time wasted was that? Arawn had known little more than a toddler, but Corwal had never complained. He taught him how to dress and groom himself, how to count, read, and write, what table manners were as well as what was their country's history and political situation.

On top of all that, Arawn now had a grasp of his powers. He wasn't anywhere near good with them, but he could control them in most situations. A lot of time had passed since the last time he lashed out without any reason.

His eyes shifted to Val who lay unconscious in the cart beside him. All the man had wanted was to save his sister and make sure no innocent people got hurt. Was it too much to ask?

The turmoil in Arawn's heart grew stronger, threatening to burst out in some unwelcome way. He gritted his teeth and lowered his head, focusing his eyes on his shoes. There was nothing to be done anymore.

All of them had made their choices.

The cart rolled forward at a slow pace, the old horse in no hurry anywhere. Rain and Betty led it in silence, neither of them wanting to speak. Their animals seemed to sense their mood and were models of good behavior.

It was evening by the time they reached the village, but the summer sun was late to set. Everyone was still busy pulling the corpses out of the streets and bringing them to a grave being dug on a nearby hill.

A few people raised their heads at their approach, but no one spoke. Both men and women had red, puffy eyes. A few were still sniffling while one man sat on his doorstep and wept loudly, not caring that everyone could see him.

When they reached the priest's house, he went out to welcome them. "What happened? Did you miss each other on the road? Your two companions—"

"It's fine. We met them," Rain said with tiredness in her voice. "Is there anywhere we can stay for the night?"

The man nodded and showed them to where they could stable the horses. He helped them unsaddle the animals and brush their sweat away so they didn't catch a cold.

Once the cart was pushed out of the way, Arawn and Betty picked Val up. The priest gave them a long look and led them into his house. "Did you at least kill that creature?" he asked.

"We did, and paid a heavy price for it."

"I'm sorry," the priest said with a sigh. "I know you didn't have to do it for us."

"It wasn't for you," Betty stated with defiance in her voice. "We did it because it was right, and we would do it again if we had to."

They were given a single room which had six beds. One of them was taken up by the woman they had helped before while the other five were free.

Arawn helped Val to the bed, then asked the priest for a few buckets of water to wash himself. He was pointed to a well whose water was ice cold, but he didn't mind. Once he returned to the room, he chose the bed by the window and lay down on the clean linen bedding.

His body was ecstatic about finally being able to relax and stretch out, but his mind had no interest in sleep. He lay with his eyes open, staring at the brown ceiling above him. What was he supposed to do now?

In a day, he had lost both his closest friend and his immediate goal. Once again, he was nothing more than a wooden board floating in the middle of a sea. Going right or left, it didn't change anything for him. In whichever direction he turned, there was only the blue waters without a shore in sight.