This happens about three weeks after Hongbin goes back to Hakyeon’s, maybe a few days after the end of chapter 8.

Chapter 9 – Sworn to Help

Hakyeon jerks awake in his bed, woken by spells he’d set up to warn him when people got close to the house. He’s hyperaware and for several seconds he just sits and listens. Leo shifts in his sleep, rolling onto his back and throwing an arm above his head. He doesn’t wake up as Hakyeon gets out of bed quickly, throwing on the first clothes he touches and rushing from the house.

The sorcerer is expecting guards from the palace or maybe even some of the army, but what greets him is a group of apprentices that had gotten away when he and Leo had gone away a few weeks ago. He supposes he should have at least expected this a little, after all, he’d killed their teachers.

They don’t talk and they don’t give him time to offer them a chance, the instant he’s within distance they attack, shouting out spells at random.

Hakyeon thought they were doing okay, but most of them were average. He dodges and blocks their attacks and they get closer and closer to him. He lets them come, waiting for them to be close enough so he could use the spell he’d developed especially for situations like this, a spell he would have used on them last time if he’d had the chance.

While he waits he lets them exhaust themselves. It takes them longer than he thought it would but eventually Hakyeon decides they’re close enough. He jumps, a single word escaping his lips.

To his surprise one of the apprentices runs and he thinks she must have seen him use the spell before. The rest of the apprentices on the other hand continue to charge forward. When Hakyeon lands magic explodes from his body and they go flying backwards. Their reserves are too exhausted to try block against such a powerful attack and Hakyeon throws out a cushioning spell to stop them smashing into rocks and trees. None of them get up, knocked unconscious by the spell, and Hakyeon sprints after the apprentice that was getting away.

He catches up quickly, using magic to make the apprentice stop. She turns to face him, tears staining her dirtied face and arms locked to her sides by his spell.

“Please don’t take my magic,” she begs, voice catching.

Hakyeon doesn’t reply. He throws one hand forward and speaks the same word from before. She flies backward and just like previously he uses a cushioning spell to aid her landing. Panting, he picks up the sorcerer he’d just taken out and throws her over his shoulder, then he begins the walk back to where the others were.

When he gets there he sighs, he doesn’t have any sympathy for anyone that exploits creatures or anyone that defends people who do. Despite that, as he stands surrounded by apprentices that would no longer be able to practice magic, he feels remorseful. That magic needed to die out for creatures to live on was something that he hated. He loved magic and its complexities and the way it could be used. But he also hated magic and its complexities and the way it was used. If it was something that did as much damage as it was doing, was it a good thing?

Why did they need spells and potions? The surrounding countries had outlawed them hundreds of years ago, incorporated top-level creatures into society, started protecting minor and major creatures. Spells and potions weren’t even something they thought about anymore, replaced with technology and medicines that were fairer and more accessible. Why was this country so far behind?

This is what Hakyeon wanted to change. What he’d been working for years to change. What he wanted more than anything. He wanted a country where anyone could live safely and there wasn’t a huge divide between those with power and those without it. He wanted that fear in people’s eyes gone. This is what Hakyeon was working for and he was willing to throw himself down, to destroy himself, so that everybody else could rise up.

The apprentices are still unconscious and Hakyeon works quickly to get them up and floating so he can get to Ravi’s place. They’ll be out of it for a while but Hakyeon doesn’t really want to deal with them when they wake up and discover their ability to do magic gone, he usually leaves that to Ravi.

Ravi is surprised to see Hakyeon before the sun is even up, but it wasn’t the first time this had happened and he takes it in stride. He agrees with what Hakyeon was trying to do, he just didn’t like how he was doing it, especially since it didn’t look like Hakyeon knew what to do in the end.

When he sees the number of apprentices this time he sighs. “I’ll give them the run down and then cook up a potion so they can get home.”

“Thanks, Ravi,” Hakyeon says.

“I’m going to need more of Leo’s hair and nails if you keep up this pace,” Ravi tells him.

It’s Hakyeon’s turn to sigh. “He changed last night. I’ll send him over and he’ll give you some.”

Ravi shifts uncomfortably. This potion was the teleportation potion Hakyeon had spent two years working on and it was the potion he hated the most. He didn’t use creatures in potions unless he could help it and with this potion he couldn’t for two of the main ingredients.

 It used Leo’s human hair as well as nail clippings, both of which Ravi hated asking for, but it also used dragon blood and centaur hoof shavings. The blood required a lot of very rare ingredients to replace them and most of Ravi’s earnings went towards purchasing them, the shavings on the other hand he would buy from the centaurs.

Hakyeon knows that Ravi hates the potion, but he can’t make it himself anymore or his deliberate magic reserves will grow even bigger than they already were. He smiles apologetically at Ravi.

“Sorry to keep dragging you into this.”

“It’s fine.”

It isn’t, but Ravi had promised years ago, back when Hakyeon had asked for help and told him what he was trying to do. Ravi had regretted agreeing to help when Hakyeon had brought him body after body to be sent off. He remembers the day he’d realized that Hakyeon was using experimental spells on these sorcerers that came after him and being sickened. He remembers not long after that when Hakyeon had showed up with a grin and a sorcerer that was still breathing but had no magic. Ravi still questions whether all those deaths were worth it.

Hakyeon doesn’t want to stay long, the spell he’d used to take the apprentice’s magic used a lot of magic and he knew he wouldn’t be able to do anything for a few days. He tells Ravi that he’ll be sending Hongbin over again and Ravi feels his annoyance and concern from a few weeks ago spring back up. He doesn’t want to think of Hakyeon as a bad person, but he could be dangerous and his track record with apprentices wasn’t good.

Hakyeon feels Ravi grow tense and he has a pretty good guess as to why. “Listen, Ravi. I know that you’re worried I’ll do something to Hongbin but I–”

“It happened to the last two,” Ravi cuts in calmly.

“They–”

“Deserved it?!”

They’ve had this fight before and Ravi hadn’t intended to start it again. Every time they had this fight it was never any different. It would start about the apprentices and then somehow change to the bodies Hakyeon had brought in. This time Hakyeon wanted to try explain clearly.

“You know what they did, what they tried to do. Do you think I should have just let them go?”

“I don’t think you should have killed them,” Ravi replies coolly. “They were just kids.”

Hakyeon always got so upset about this topic, it was probably why he and Ravi ended up arguing instead of talking about the issue. His first two apprentices had seemed like good kids. They studied hard and excelled in both potions and spells. They had pretty much read every book he owned and one day they found the book on top-level creatures Hakyeon kept in his own stash of books, hidden away.

He hadn’t expected it, to wake up in the middle of the night to a paralysis potion being shoved down his throat, to Leo being knocked out and carried off, to those ‘good kids’ going against everything he’d ever taught them about the treatment of creatures and how magic should be used.

It had taken hours for the potion to wear off but he still caught them on their way to the palace, bickering over whether to give Leo to the king or to sell him elsewhere or to use him themselves. Hakyeon had never been so scared and angry in his life and the result of it had been two apprentices who first learned not to mess with him and then never learned anything again.

“I hadn’t invented the spell I use now yet,” Hakyeon reminds Ravi.

He’d always wondered if that was an excuse. If he had had that spell, would he have used it in that situation? Was it his temper that had decided his actions that day? Was he corrupted? Hakyeon was a hypocrite who taught one thing and then did another; Ravi knew that and that was why he was worried for Hongbin.

“There is always another spell,” Ravi cuts into the older man’s thoughts. “All that time you could have been knocking them out with some other spell. It isn’t like you’re not a genius at inventing spells, you can easily figure something out. That is my issue, and you know it.”

“If I knock them out what’s to stop them from doing the exact same things in the future? Should I have built a prison in my house and locked them up there? How is that any better than the people I go after who lock up creatures? And I don’t know if you know this, but spell making is more dangerous than potion making.”

Ravi does know that. He understands everything Hakyeon has been trying to say for years, but in his mind he still sees the genius apprentice he’d idolized in his teens, not this man who had returned from the palace and was willing to kill to get to his end.

He knows how much magic Hakyeon had to use when he was at the palace, the number of creatures Hakyeon was forced to use in order to create the potions he did, he knows what that must have resulted in a huge deliberate magic reserve and a sometimes unstable mind.

Ravi just wants this to be over. He wants his friend back. He wants Hakyeon’s goal to be achieved. He just doesn’t know if it will turn out as well as Hakyeon thinks it will.

“I know that,” he says calmly. “And I’m glad you invented it. But when will this all be over? How many more times will you go out there and attack people?”

“Until creatures are on the same level as us. When they can walk around without fear of attack or imprisonment. When they can have real lives in the world they belong in.”

This was the part Ravi agreed with. Normally during their fights Hakyeon would ask if Ravi could think of any other ways to ‘fight this war’ and Ravi never had an answer. He really wished he did. You can’t put a sorcerer in a prison cell because they will get out. You could give them a potion that suppresses their magic, but it required top-level creatures as ingredients and even Ravi didn’t have a substitute for that. Even the one he’d given Hakyeon to help him recover used top-level creatures but they were ingredients Ravi normally got by asking not killing.

“I know you think that I’m obsessed and corrupted and not the person I used to be, Ravi. I’m not stupid, you’re scared and I get that. I’m trying to change this whole country, its dynamics and culture and everything… But I won’t hurt Hongbin at least.”

The words are quiet and serious and it was probably the most clearly Hakyeon had ever been able to describe what he was trying to do, what he wanted to change.

Ravi sighs and runs his hands through his hair. He thinks his feelings about Hakyeon will always be conflicting and confusing but he also thinks that Hakyeon could be doing worse things to try achieve his goal.

“I’ll make you some more of the suppressant,” he mutters tiredly.

“Ah,” Hakyeon mumbles, “thanks.”

Hakyeon doesn’t know if he’s doing the right thing. He’d been questioning himself for years and never come to an answer. He’d begged Leo to tell him if what he was doing was the right thing, but Leo was hugely biased and knew it, so he’d tell Hakyeon to ask other people.

Ravi decides to change the topic a little, not wanting this to turn into a real fight. “So you’re sending Hongbin over again?”

“Yeah. We were going to next week anyway, but then this happened. I’ll take a week to recover and then we’ll go.”

“…Aren’t you using a bit too much magic all at once?” Ravi worries.

Hakyeon rolls his eyes and grins. “I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ravi grumbles, not believing the other man.

Hakyeon waits patiently as Ravi makes him some more suppressant. They talk, about lighter topics, about things they’d talk about when they were younger, Ravi keeps somehow keeps bringing up Hongbin and Hakyeon can’t keep the knowing smirk off his face.

“Don’t you say anything,” Ravi warns him as Hakyeon leaves.

“I won’t, I won’t. I’ll let him figure it out himself.”

Ravi’s face is red as he pushes his old friend out the front door of the shop. “Just go…”

Hakyeon laughs. “Fine, I will. I promise I won’t tell.”

“…Be safe when you go,” Ravi mutters. “I’ll send some suppressant to your house while you’re gone so it’s there when you get back.”

“Oh! Thanks, Ravi! I better go.”

Hakyeon is still grinning when he finally begins walking home.

So…Originally Hakyeon killed those apprentices… Actually for a little while Hakyeon’s character almost got really dark and even Ravi was completely against him. When I decided not to go down that path this chapter (including chapter 8) got really long because I needed to explain what Hakyeon was doing and what Ravi thought, etc.