“Don't you think your goals are a little too lofty?” Aveline said.
Lyam shook his head. He looked at the setting sun. “We are moving against a force of nature itself. We'll either put things back to normal or fail miserably. If the latter is to happen, I want to go down trying everything my powers would allow me to.”
Aveline looked at the corpses of dead beasts on the ground, how the earth drank their blood. And how Lyam didn't even flinch as he stood surrounded by death.
“What if something happened to those abducted children before we could find them?” she said.
“After slaying a tier 20 beast, I'll become a basilisk wielder,” Lyam said, “I would want to test my abilities on someone who is not a mutant then. Who would be a better target than the scum that burnt my home and took my friends?”
###
They harvested nine thousand dust points in the twelve hours they spent outside. Three thousand of these went into the spirit barrier that was keeping Emma alive. Aveline placed several shape stones around the cottage to keep the wild animals from trying to break in.
They left for the big hunt the next morning. Aveline teleported both of them to a familiar cavernous room. Lyam saw the heavy metal door with its hefty iron bolt. They were in the crater.
“Circle 4 of the Crater has the teleportation turnstile. We need to use that to head to our destination,” she said as they made their way down the stone staircase. “My amulet can only move us within the forest.”
“So this turnstile is like a bigger amulet?” Lyam asked.
“You can say that.” Aveline nodded.
They arrived at Circle 4. Beyond the metal door was an antechamber where a long queue of crater denizens waited for their turn to enter the teleportation room.
Lyam was dressed in a fresh shirt, leather trousers and leather boots. Everyone else either wore woollen tunics or a simple cloak wrapped tightly around their lean bodies. The boy certainly drew some attention to himself. But he barely paid any mind to their gazes.
Their turn finally came. The door to the teleportation room was blue and gilded with silver leafing. A man stood guard with a tall wooden staff. Aveline handed him a silver scarab and he opened the door for them.
Their boots made soft clanking sounds against the wrought iron floor panels inside. The first thing Lyam noticed on entering the room was a large onyx boulder that took up a good four quarters of standing space. Not more than four people could be in the room at the same time. The second thing he noticed was a slender, middle aged man, dressed in a pair of britches, a woollen shirt and a leather vest with pockets filled with tools. The boy could tell he was a shapecrafter from the tattoos on his arms but what was peculiar about the man was that he had markings even on his face and also on his bald head. He gestured the two of them to step over to the four levers in front of the onyx boulder.
“Where to?” he asked, his bony hands resting on two levers sticking out of the floor in front of him as well.
“The Sundering Chasm,” Aveline said and pulled the crimson ruby from her amulet.
“How long?”
“Three days.” She handed the ruby to the man.
The man nodded and stepped up to the onyx boulder. He reached up and placed the ruby in a slot at the centre of the big stone. “Grab on,” he said.
Aveline held onto one of the four levers in front of them. Lyam did the same. Then the bald man went back to his own two levers and closed his eyes. The tattoos on his skin began to glow. He pushed the levers.
There was a loud whirring sound. The floor rumbled, the walls shook. The room began to shift and spin. Lyam held onto the lever in front of him. The room came to halt after completing a full circle.
The man let go of the two levers. So did Aveline and Lyam. The boy felt a subtle churn in his stomach and his legs were a bit wobbly. But he regained his composure soon.
The man retrieved Aveline's ruby from the boulder and handed it back to her. “The key to the door is embedded in the ruby so don't lose it,” the man said. “Without the key you won't be able to find the door. The door will disappear in three days so make sure you don't stay at the Chasm longer than that. May you succeed in your venture.” He opened the door for them.
They weren't in the crater anymore. Outside the threshold was a clear blue sky, white wisps of clouds and vast expanse of red sand and crimson rock. The Chasm was the main region of demarcation between the kingdom of Brismont and the country of Avandra. This vast strip of rocky desert used to be a part of the latter. But because of something that happened during the Great Cleansing, both countries let the Chasm become an unclaimed territory.
Lyam and Aveline walked out into the Sundering Chasm.
###
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The wind was dry and it rubbed against them like sandpaper as they stalked the rocky land. Lyam flicked the perspiration off his brow and glared up at the glaring sun.
“What kind of mutant even lives in this hell?” he said.
“The Mountain Scourge,” Aveline said. “It's a mutated scorpion.”
“A scorpion?” He frowned. “We came all the way here to hunt a scorpion?”
“No. We came here to hunt a tier 15 dust mutant that lives in the desert mountains and emits three different kinds of poisons.” Aveline pulled two scarves from her satchel. She tossed one at him and wrapped one around her own head. “Don't pass out.”
Lyam donned the scarf over his head as they kept walking. Beyond the haze of sun and sand, he glimpsed a distant sight of hills. “If it lives in the mountains then why didn't we ask that bald man to drop us closer to the hills over there?”
“According to the Mutant-logue, the scourge is very good at establishing a territory. There are ways in which it can sense us coming,” she said. “There was a good chance of an ambush if we'd arrived closer to the mountains.”
“Well, at least we could have landed a bit closer than now.” Lyam sighed.
The shapecrafter smirked at him. “Don't act like a bit of heat or walking is going to tire you out. You’re not a regular child.”
“If only life dust had made me immune to boredom as well.”
Aveline chuckled. They kept walking.
Morning turned to afternoon. The sun was burning brighter in the sky. Lyam could feel the heat of the ground through the leather of his boots. He took a sip from his waterskin.
He wasn't feeling tired even though he had been moving for quite a few hours. He could still feel the heat and still get thirsty after a long stretch of walking. But that feeling of weakness he would've gotten after such effort a few weeks ago wasn't there anymore.
Apparently the prior gaps in his endurance were being filled by his dust reserve. Yet he tried to keep his mortal health replenished by hydrating himself instead of relying on life dust too much. A level 15 beast was no joke to deal with. He was going to need all the power he could muster.
He looked at his companion. The shapecrafter looked about as unfazed as him, walking with barely a hint of fatigue even though they hadn't taken any stops since they left the teleporter.
“Aveline?” he said.
“Yes?”
“How do shapecrafters perform magic?” the boy asked. “I know that your soul is also modified like mine but you also use wards and such. What do you use to fuel your magic?”
Aveline kept looking ahead for a long time.
Lyam pursed his lips nervously. Then he said, “Well, you don't have to answer if it has to do with that…death pact you talked about.”
“No, it's not about the pact.” Aveline scratched her head. “I was wondering how to explain it in a way that you'd understand.”
Lyam was even more curious now. He walked a little faster until he was moving alongside her.
“Shapecraft is not limited to elemental magic, actually,” Aveline said. “Elemental magic is the easiest kind. The only kind of magic that crafters can't perform is the one that involves tinkering with the inherent shape of a living being.”
Lyam nodded, “I remember you telling me about crafters being unable to perform soul magic.”
“I'm not referring to soul magic,” Aveline said. “You see, there are classes among dust wielders that can still perform manipulation magic–things like mind control. Crafters don't have access to such powers because we don't use life dust in shapecraft.”
“Then what do you use?”
“It's an energy called verta. It is what every non-living thing in this universe is composed of. The modifications in my soul allow me to use that energy to manipulate the shape of the spirit element around me. But I can also use verta to access an embedded shape. Like in this ruby.” She held up her crimson amulet. “What do you think lets me teleport us throughout the forest?”.
Lyam gazed at the ruby. “So with verta you can access an embedded shape but you can't change it like how you do with the spirit element.”
“No, I can't play with its shape much.” She pressed her lips together, as if suppressing a smile.
“Is that why you can't teleport us anywhere away from the forest except the Crater, because those are the only locations that the embedded shape can send you to?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “The embedded shape is fairly rigid. You can store locations or other information in it but you can't manipulate it the way you can with an elemental shape.” She finally revealed the smile she had been suppressing. “You are a quick learner, Lyam.”
The boy blushed and looked away. “It's all like a puzzle. I like solving puzzles.”
“You're surely in luck then. There are a lot of mysteries and riddles at the heart of all magic.” Aveline's expressions softened when she looked at him again. “And I hope you manage to enjoy learning those, despite the reason why you had to walk this path.”
Lyam's own face sobered up. He was thinking of how to respond to her words when he frowned. “Aveline, look at that.” He pointed at something almost a mile away.
Aveline shaded her eyes against the harsh sun and squinted. “I don't see anything.”
Lyam didn't have to squint. His eyesight barely struggled in the haze of the harsh sun. “It's a hand, sticking out from behind that rock.”
Aveline's eyes went wide when she made out the faintest shape of a limb through the haze. Lyam ran towards it.
###
The hand behind the rock belonged to a man in his early twenties. His skin was scorched red by the sun and his eyes wouldn’t dare to open in the burning light. Tired whimpers escaped his blistered lips, struggling to form words. A green patch of something seemed to spread across his neck like lichen. “Water…burns…water…” he uttered in breathless whimpers
“What happened to him?” Lyam said.
Aveline was holding back a grimace. She dug into her satchel and pulled out the Mutant-logue. “I'm afraid we know what gave him that.” She rifled through the pages and ran her eyes over the words. She nodded reluctantly. “It's…the scourge's poison,” she said.
“Is he going to die?” Lyam said.
“Rather slowly, but yes. The scourge poisons its victims to paralyze them. That green moss on his neck is giving off a scent that only the scourge can detect.” She shut the book and shoved it back into her satchel. “And when the victim falls limp by paralysis, the scourge comes out to claim the prey. The moss on his neck is still green, which means it hasn't been long since he encountered the scourge.”
Lyam knit his eyebrows. "So the mutant is probably close by."