Lyam was about to start back towards the forest when he heard a shuffle of footsteps. Someone walking around right outside his now-dilapidated house.

It was a man dressed in a frail cotton shirt, tattered trousers and scruffy sandals. He had a bindle on one shoulder and a knight’s rusty half helm on his head. A vagrant. He poked through the debris and scavenged the houses, maybe looking for food. He walked out of a burnt building that used to be a bakery, waving a spatula.

The man came to a halt when he saw the boy standing in the ashen ruin.

“I thought they took everyone,” the vagrant said.

Lyam knew who he was talking about. He shook his head. “No, they just took the children.”

“They didn't take you though.”

Lyam cocked his head. “How do you know I lived here?”

The vagrant gestured at the scorched village around them. “This is a graveyard. One doesn't come to lay flowers on a stranger's grave. Unless you like to wander around like me.”

Lyam frowned. “No, I didn’t wander in here. I used to live here.”

“I'm sorry for what happened,” the vagrant said with a shrug.

“Don’t be sorry for me,” Lyam said stubbornly. “I don't think my family is dead.”

“Then why did you come to the graveyard?”

I just wanted to see my home again, he thought. But he wasn't sure if he could call it that anymore. There wasn't much to call it anything in the first place. So he didn't answer the vagrant's question and instead looked back at him. “How did you find this place?” he asked.

“How I find most places.” The man shrugged again. “I wandered.”

“And what were you looking for in that house?” Lyam asked.

“Anything that doesn’t belong to anyone but is still worth taking. Like this thing.” He waved the spatula. “Makes me feel like a knight.” He brandished it as if it was a shiny new sword.

Lyam smiled wryly. He looked back at his house. “Have you seen something like this before?”

“You mean another graveyard?”

Lyam nodded.

“I have,” the man said. “Seven years ago.”

The Great Cleansing, Lyam thought. It couldn’t have been anything else that this man was referring to. Long buried memories of his father came back to the boy. He swallowed the lump in his throat.

The vagrant kept talking. “It was a much bigger graveyard than this one. Lots of graves too. That's where I found this.” He fingered the visor of his helm.

“Did you find any survivors in that…graveyard?” Lyam asked.

The man shook his head. “No, they'd all moved on. I'm certain they've moved on from here too.”

Lyam went quiet for a moment. He'd promised to meet back with Mamie in Eisdel. It had been four days since the shapecrafters attacked Vermeil. He wondered if she would still be waiting for him in that city, wondered if she still trusted him to keep the promise. Or had she moved on already? He looked back at the vagrant. “I have another question for you.”

“Yes?”

“Suppose if your home was attacked like this. And you got separated from your family. How long would it take you to lose hope of ever finding them again?” Lyam asked.

“I'd lose my hope sooner than most people.” The man shrugged again--that seemed to be his thing. “But for most people, they'll struggle for a bit. They'll ask questions, they'll look around, they'll try what can be tried and then they’ll give up.”

“But how long would that be?”

“Could be days. Could be years. Could be mere hours,” the man said. “That's the thing about hope. It always comes attached with the choice of giving up.”

###

Next morning, Aveline found Lyam in the kitchen. Apparently he'd woken up before her. And he was making breakfast.

It seemed like a good breakfast too. Roasted meat served with rye bread and the kind of herbal tea she liked. The shapecrafter looked at him with approval. “What's the occasion?” she said as she sat at the table.

The boy brought her the meal with a curt smile. “Just thought I'd help out today.” He shrugged.

“I'm certainly not complaining.” Aveline chuckled and took a bite of the meat. “Hm, what is this? It tastes really good.”

“Rabbit,” said Lyam. “I caught it around dawn.”

“You did say your Mamie used to be a chef. Seems like you learned a few things from her.”

“I like to think I did.” Lyam dug into his own breakfast.

A comfortable silence descended on the two of them as they ate. But Lyam soon broke the quiet.

“So, you started learning shapecraft very young, didn't you?” he asked.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Not as young as some others do. I think I was just a year or two older than you when I did.”

“So, it's true?” Lyam leaned forward. “Shapecrafters learn their magic as children.”

“It's an advantage to start learning early.” She shrugged.

“And so they abduct orphans?”

Aveline stopped eating. She looked at him. “What are you playing at?” her voice was curious but there was a slight edge to it.

Lyam shook his head nervously. “N-Nothing. It's just that yesterday I went to see my village. And the things I saw, it made me wonder if shapecrafters only take in orphans, then why did the ones who burned my village took away my friends. None of them were orphans.”

Aveline groaned. “Most young shapecrafters are orphans, yes. But they aren't always abducted. Those were some very twisted guilds that used that method for making new apprentices. But commoners took a few examples like that and turned it into a tale to spook their children.”

Lyam nodded as he listened to her carefully. He could see the point she was making. It was from one of Mamie's stories that he'd learned that information about the crafters. He looked at Aveline again.

“So, is it possible that an evil guild of crafters still exists and they were the ones who invaded my village?” he asked.

“It's a possibility,” Aveline said with a mouthful of bread. “But being an orphan isn't a strict requirement. It's a bit more complicated than that.”

Lyam frowned. “How is it complicated?”

Aveline remained quiet.

“Oh, is it one of those things you can die for talking about?”

She sighed and nodded.

“I have another question,” Lyam said, “those evil crafters who abducted children, what did they do with them?”

Aveline rolled her lips nervously. “Lots of reprehensible things that I'd rather not talk about at breakfast. Some who had potential would be kept for training. And others…”

Lyam looked at her intently. “What about the others?”

“They were sold off as slaves.”

###

Lyam did the dishes before Aveline could tell him. After he was done they headed out into the forest again.

“What are we going to hunt today?” he asked.

“No mutants,” she said. “We are focusing on raising your dust points for now. So shoot down any normal creatures you see.”

“Why no mutants?”

“To unlock your next stat, we have to pit you against at least a tier 15 beast.”

“And for my last one?”

“Something above tier 20.”

“And then I'll become a basilisk wielder?”

“Yes, but that won't be enough in the crater,” Aveline said. “Even though you'll have four skills and five stats by the time you are basilisk, you'll be up against people who have been working on their skills for years. Not just wielders but crafters too.”

Lyam remained quiet and allowed himself to absorb that information. They spent the next hour wandering the forest. Their first hunt for the day was a pack of coyotes. Next was a pair of mountain wolves. It bumped up Lyam's dust reserve by a thousand points. He asked her if it was enough for the day.

“No,” Aveline said. “The tier 15 mutant has quite a few ruthless attacks. It probably doesn't even live in this forest. We'll have to leave the cottage for a few days to go and hunt that one. In order to keep your sister nourished on life dust we'll have to gather at least five thousand extra points since we won't be around to look after her.”

They settled down to rest by a river where a pair of monkeys tried to steal their supper. Lyam shot them with a single blast of [syphon burst]. That added five hundred more dust points to his reserve.

Lyam shrugged. The two of them went back to their supper.

“Is it going to be okay to leave the forest for a week?” he said. “What if that wielder comes back?”

“Slim chance. Whoever that wielder was, they already found the most valuable thing they could in this forest. My worry was always about the commoners breaking through the barrier. But we don’t have to worry about that now since Vermeil is–” she stopped herself and looked at Lyam, wincing in guilt.

The boy shook his head with a grim look in his eyes. “You are right. Vermeil is not a problem anymore.”

Aveline wanted to slap herself. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to–”

“It is what it is.” Lyam shrugged. “Whenever magic is involved, things are bound to get severe, isn’t it? There was the Great Cleansing, then Emma's condition and also my village.” He sighed.

“Lyam, magic is also involved in you curing your sister.”

“She isn't cured yet.” The grimness still hadn't left his eyes. “But you are right again. It's not completely hopeless.”

They wrapped up their small picnic and went about their hunt again. Lyam blasted a fox, a boar and more coyotes. When it was close to evening, Aveline teleported them both on top of a tree. They sat observing a mountain cave about fifty metres away. A rib cage and several bones lay at its entrance. Some kind of carnivore had made a home inside.

“When this is all over after I cure Emma, will I really be able to go back to my previous life?” the boy asked.

Aveline frowned. “Why are you asking that now?”

“I have been wondering about it since last night. If the soul magic can separate my sister from the flower, then wouldn't it be able to do the same for me?” he asked.

Aveline remained quiet for a long time. Then she said, “It might be possible, but would you really want to do that?”

Lyam shrugged. “I don't want to believe mamie is dead. But if she is…then Emma would be on her own after I cure her.”

“Why would she be on her own?” Aveline raised an eyebrow.

“I wouldn't want to turn her into an enemy of the crown with me.”

She gave him a piercing look. “If you have some weird idea about sending her back to Brismont alone once you cure her, then let me tell you that you are condemning her to a crueller fate than being with you on the run.” Aveline looked back at the cave. “I've told you that when the Crown finds out about you being an unauthorized wielder, they'll target those close to you. Emma will be safer running with you than going back to the kingdom while you live on its fringes as an outlaw.”

Lyam pondered over it. But his thoughts were interrupted by a fierce growl that thundered from the cave. The boy raised his hand and unleashed [syphon burst], obliterating the lion's head in a flash.

Aveline whistled. “That was a really good aim.”

Lyam still wasn't completely focused on the hunt. His mind was busy worrying about the future. From the corner of his eye, he spotted another silhouette by the cave.

A lioness. Then another. Then another lion.

“Seems like you got their pack leader,” Aveline said. “They seem quite mad.”

Without answering, Lyam jumped off the tree and walked out into the meadow by the mountain. The pack roared and descended off their rocky tower. The boy didn't flinch as they made their way towards him.

He unleashed [syphon burst] once again.

There was a crack of thunder. A blinding flash that made Aveline flinch. She blinked several times before her vision returned. The boy stood alone on a ground littered with corpses of lions. The setting sun threw a long, dark shadow behind him.

Aveline hopped off the tree and ran up to him. “That was–”

Lyam raised his hand. “I've decided.”

The shapecrafter cocked her head. “Decided what?”

“I'm not just going to save Emma. I'm also going to find mamie. And I'll bring all the abducted children back from those crafters.”