Since the very moment Gavin woke up, he felt the anticipation. Something was coming today, something big, world-turning. Cormac seldom talked to him on the way, but the same was true for Gavin. They just walked through the forests, the sun obscured by the high trees.
It was coming, the thing that Cormac warned him about yesterday. Every step felt heavier and though Gavin knew not, what was awaiting him, he still dreaded it. He hated that it had to happen. He wanted to travel like this, with Cormac by his side, learning of the world. But the vacation was over, or at least it felt like it was.
The trees in the distance slowly disappeared and the changing sight on the horizon only amplified Gavin's feelings.
The desolate wasteland before him showed no promise of brighter tomorrows, nor brighter yesterdays. It only spoke of the bleak reality. The now that seemed to be moving, yet unchanging. It was wrong, cruel. It swallowed the light of the sun enough to darken the skies with grey clouds. Though the clouds would shed now water for the charred desert.
This place was destroyed and it was hellbent on staying that way.
Gavin stopped at the end of the tree line, watching the ever-growing wasteland before his eyes. He did not want to go on. He did not want to go on.
"We can turn back." Cormac said, his tone as heavy as the situation seemed. "We can. We could go to the villages behind us. Could try exploring more of them. Maybe we would meet a girl we would like. We could marry her too."
Each and every word of Cormac's resonated throughout Gavin's mind. How he wanted that. The simple life of a carefree adventurer. It was so nice, so refreshing. He did not remember what came before, not fully. But he knew very well that it was nowhere near as nice. His life lacked what made it worth living, something he might have had a chance to find now.
"Forgotten things might be better to leave just as. Why remember if…if the past brings nothing but suffering right? We can clearly see what it looked like." Cormac gestured across the burnt plains. "Not inviting. It does not want us back. It tries to repel us. We can feel it right? Can feel how much it is a part of us."
It was eerily familiar. Too much so. Not only the nature around, burnt as it was, but the feeling of it. The place recognized Gavin as Gavin recognized it, though it was still blurry at best.
"This part hates us. Hates us as much as we hate it. We know it well. We can never get rid of it…but we can leave it behind. Leave it and never come back. It would stay here and it would fester. It would grow and it would gnaw at us bit by bit. But we'll be sooner dead, than eaten through."
Gavin watched the way before him, the long path across nothing but destruction. He was watching something beyond him, something much stronger, much greedier. Something so gluttonous as to be indestructible itself. Even if destruction was its actual nature.
"We can turn back." Cormac repeated.
It was all that Gavin wanted at the moment. Go back. Go to the life of Gavin the eyeless. Traverse the kingdom, maybe even take a look into the rumored wilds. Learn of what the world was, rather than his place in it. Rather than the place he dug for himself.
But it was hollow. Even if he turned back, the thing before him would not. It would catch up one day, even if Cormac denied it. It would claim Gavin again and do much worse than it might have done until now. It was its purpose in existence.
He took a breath. He wiped the tears of fear and sadness that ran across his face. He began walking again.
And he knew very well. That just one set of steps was left in his wake.
Gavin woke up outside of a burning house, the fire easily reaching the skies. He watched his home, a place he knew for all his life burndown. A watchman set next to him. His breaths were labored and he was sweating profusely. His belly was covered in bloodied bandages.
As Gavin watched him, the man turned to him and a suddenly sighted with relief. The man started smiling and laughing weakly.
Gavin took a look around. Every and each house in his village was either burned down or on fire. People cried and screamed in all around them. They spoke to the kind god, trying to eke out a blessing from their beloved god. But the god's senses must have been focused elsewhere. No rain, no divine intervention, no help other than the watchmen patrol that just happened to be marching by. The village of Inglueves was left to ash.
And even in that moment of despair, in the confusion, in the very worst of what man have to go through. The watchman before him was laughing. He was smiling after he stopped laughing. And his eyes were fixated on Gavin.
"I thought we lost you." he said weakly. "Thought I was not quick enough."
Gavin looked down at himself. There were no burns, no bruises even. Despite what he remembered, despite the explosion he himself created. He was completely fine.
"How?"
"A first-grade healing tonic." the watchman managed to say between his ragged breaths. Gavin looked at his bandages again and they seemed to redden even further. "Only had one of those. Thought I'd be too late." the man still spoke with a smile, even when he was clearly in pain.
Before Gavin managed to ask anything, before he realized the situation he was in fully a different voice started speaking to him. Though it was a much different tone.
"Gavin, where is Julie?" asked her mother. She was breathing quick and her eyes were wide. She held him by his shirt lifting him slightly off the ground. "Where is she Gavin?" the woman screamed.
"Julie…" Gavin thought and then a foreboding thought struck him. A thought that crushed into him like lightning.
He twisted himself off of the woman's grip and started running to the barn.
His parents never gave much value to the kind god and Gavin did not believe in him, but even he started chanting his prayers as he ran. He was scared of what he would see once he would pass the horizon, once the barn would be in view.
And when he got there, he saw no barn. It burned down. The dry hay must have burned the barn quick.
He stopped there, frozen for a few seconds. Then he fell on the ground.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
He could not move and he could not think. He barricaded the loose plank. He closed off all entrances except the locked doors. He left Julie to burn.
Gavin walked through the desolate wasteland and he remembered. This wasn't the same as the one in his childhood. This was much fresher. But with every step and every charred stump, with every ruin of a house, with every sign of death. He remembered more of his past.
In the days of walking in shining forests and clearings. In the days when he swam through a river or visited a bustling village, he never knew more of him. It made sense, those places were healthy and he wasn't.
He remembered what he caused that day.
He remembered the words that the other high caste used when describing the incident. How the lord has unfortunately gotten mad. What a tragedy it was since he was a renowned battle-wager, one of the best they knew. One of the sacred families even. It was awful, it was unexpected.
And there was not even a mention of Gavin's parents, Julie, nor any other poor soul that died during the maddening of their 'esteemed lord'. Gavin hated that, loathed each word uttered about the incident. He absolutely refused to be a just a subject ever again.
Enough to accept the first hand that offered a different kind of life.
He learned to wield weapons, thought he was never very good with those. He learned the secrets to poisons and herbal medicine. Learned how to behave, how to act as a different person altogether.
And when he learned enough, he was allowed to kill. Kill all those that cared not for his family. Kill them however slow or quick he wanted. He never asked why, he never cared. But very soon, killing was not enough. It was too impersonal. He knew next to nothing about his targets, so he started to learn more. He befriended many first, or acted as their servant. He filled himself with all the weaknesses and sins of the person. He reached for the wicked parts of them, for the pathetic parts of them. He wanted to know all these, so he could enjoy the fatal moment as much as he could. It was his way. A ritual he himself cultivated.
Until his master brought in a new job. By that time, he was used to only getting a simple name and a name he had gotten. Cormac.
The boy proved disappointing, boring. Gavin waited to see the bad sides of him, but Cormac never relented. Instead he just cried in his room when things got tough. Was empathetic when he could have mocked. Then he somehow evaded all of Gavin's attempts. He evaded them for so long, that he managed to cripple Gavin. Win against Gavin. Almost kill Gavin.
Then his employer decided to tie loose ends, and almost finished off Gavin. They threw him at the pile of bodies, when he pretended to poison himself. Though it appeared that he calculated the dosage incorrectly.
That much he now remembered, as he walked into the village center.
He paid no mind to the mansion he destroyed, he did not think about his little bout with Aviana. He spared the long-rotting body on the ground just a glance. He was not looking around the village.
He was looking at his 'only friend', at Cormac. At the ghost that was not a ghost, that appeared before him once more.
"Not Gavin the eyeless anymore, are you?" He asked, but answering felt unnecessary.
"Don't hide in him anymore. Even if you want to, we are not him." Gavin said to Cormac, to the thin imitation of a living man. It nodded, as its skin started bubbling, its muscles moved and his eyes changed color.
"You are still forgetting one thing." Gavin tapped at the empty socket of his left eye. The other Gavin's left eye patched itself into skin.
"What now?" the other Gavin asked.
"I thought you'd tell me. You were the one who brought me back here." The both of them were at wits end. Neither sure of what exactly to do, even if they both felt a great need to do something.
Gavin looked at the rotting body lying next to him. At the deteriorating reminder of a man who tried to better him, who saved him…in more ways than one.
"You think he was the one from before?"
"I don't know. May have been." Gavin said. It was true that the man's features were familiar. "Wouldn't make much of a difference really. He was a good man. A good man that tried to help. And I killed him. Killed him and did not think of him ever since."
"We killed-"
"No. This was just me. We have made a lot of bad decisions together, but this one…this one is all on me."
Gavin walked over to the corpse, and hefted it by its ankles. He expected to pull a part of the leg out, but thankfully, the body stayed together.
"Could you look for a shovel anywhere here? Just let me know if you see one. I know you can't bring it back."
The other Gavin seemed confused for a moment, but then he ventured off into the village.
The decomposing body smelt terribly, stinging Gavin's nose in much the same way that it pierced his mind.
He was so caught up in his self-righteousness, he did not see that he became nothing else but a dagger for the problem itself. He wanted to hurt and kill so much, that he forgot what he even started for.
Now he was hauling a body of a man that was undoubtedly good, through a village that was his birthplace. Through a village that threatened never to return to the green paradise it used to be. To never once again accept life, for it was decrepit and irredeemable.
He brought the body to the burnt tree trunk. It used to be a blossoming apple tree, it's fruit was fresh and it's leaves provided cool shade. It used to be one of the most beautiful places to be.
And it still was the best place in the whole village, although damaged beyond repair as much as the rest.
"Here." The other Gavin thrown a shovel next to the body.
Gavin knew not how his other self managed to grasp the object, but there were far more important things at hand.
He buried the body. Then he brought one of the stone discs with the help of his other self and placed it against the dead tree.
"Here lies a man, who saw the light in paths dark
A man who would lose his life, for believing in a rotten heart.
A watchman of morals and a great man
Here lies Hank Furden"
Gavin had never been good at poetry, or expressing the world around him. But leaving the gravestone empty would be wrong.
He dropped the shovel away from the grave and he sat next to it.
"What now?" asked the other Gavin again.
"Why Cormac?"
"What do you mean?" asked the other Gavin with confusion.
"Why did you choose to look like him?"
"You know. I don't need to tell you that."
It was funny, almost laughable. He was an assassin. Someone relishing in his craft to an ungodly amount. He did nothing but use people. He never cared for anyone. And still, he was holding onto the idea of friendship like a tick.
"Cormac, huh? Maybe…maybe we could try finding him."
"I'd like to remind you that you tried to kill him."
"And he almost succeeded in killing me. Who knows, maybe there is a chance."
"If we go out on a whim like that, we will die."
"You have a better idea? Or do you require a sign from god?"
"Well I-" the other Gavin had much more to say. He wanted to speak his mind, to explain fully, why it was such a bad idea. He wanted to tell him of this folly.
But it was hard to say anything, when it started raining this heavily. It was hard to say anything, when the rain fully reaffirmed Gavin's resolution. When the desolate and forgotten, got a taste of freshness again. When the ash and dust washed away from Gavin's hair.
It was hard to say anything, when the other Gavin himself, could only smile.